


A world in image

by caricari



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: 6000 Years of Slow Burn (Good Omens), Falling In Love, Friendship/Love, M/M, Some Plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-26
Updated: 2019-10-15
Packaged: 2020-10-28 20:00:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 49,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20784272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caricari/pseuds/caricari
Summary: Armageddon was a plan 6000 years in the making, but who was it supposed to be a lesson for? A look at what God was really planning, from a demon's point of view, and a hell (heaven) of a love story along the way.Little bit of fluff, little bit of angst, little bit of plot.





	1. Prologue

In the beginning, he has brothers and sisters. Brothers and sisters in multitude. He wakes from dust amongst them, safe and secure, and never alone. They are all that exists. The void stretches around them, pressing in. They are blind as kittens, sheltering beneath one another’s wings - helpless, but She is there to protect them. She is mother and father, protector and comfort, the One who pulled them from the nothing into being. Before She even makes light to see, She teaches them how to love. 

In the darkness of the void, they love with the fierce possession that all young things love, desperate and unashamed. The press close together as they emerge from the shelter of Her side into the vastness of the universe. They carry the light She made inside of them as they explore the limits of their new world. They find there is nothing in it but them, so they go to Her and She shows them how to create. Together, they build, stretching the edges of possibility. They pull matter from the darkness. They wrap particles together to make heat and She loves them for it. There is only ever love, then. 

As their universe grows, She gives them roles suited to their talents. The angel has brothers who create the elements, and sisters who bind them to Her laws. Others guard Her throne, singing Her name into the fabric of all that is made. His place is deep in the void, amongst the dust and gas. He pulls the elements that his brothers and sisters have made through nebulous darkness, pressing them together so tightly that they yield heat, then collapse in on themselves to yield light. His newborn stars are burning points of warmth, and they pull existence towards them. His sisters bind that existence into planets, scattering them in orbit. His brothers break the light of his stars into different wavelengths, painting the emptiness with colour. Together, they make the skies and all the tumult within. 

She invents time to mark their progress and they learn to take pride in their work. They love all that they create, just as they love one another. They have always been one thing, together and inextricable. Then, in a single moment, that changes. 

.

They find it in the shadows of a golden sun; power stirring near the depths of a molten core. They bring it before Her, asking what it means and She tells them; 

_“You exist, but this is life.”_

Life is different. They know that immediately. It grows and swells of its own accord, taking on shape and form - drawing on itself to make more life. From the most humble of beginnings, barely more than a collection of walls and membranes, it floods the oceans, the earth and the skies. It shifts and branches, creating stranger and more wonderful permutations than they could ever have imagined. 

Life’s small planet becomes the centre of their universe. The angel’s brothers guide ice across its surface, forming lakes and mountains. His sisters govern its small moon and mark the oceans' ebb and flow. They do not question why life’s world is to be different to all that they have made before. She has ordained it. Through them, She has given it mountains and valleys, verdant plains and trees, great and small grandeurs. She must have Her reasons, so they love it unconditionally. 

As life begins to look up from the ground, to stare up at the skies, the angel who made the stars swells with pride. Her life is staring at his stars. From the poles of its world, Her life can see the winds of his golden sun stream across the atmosphere, painted in his brothers’ colours. It is beautiful because they designed it that way. He feels, for the first time, a strange hunger - a longing for more. For the first time, the world feels not just Hers, but also his. He loves it so much it would be painful, but that sort of pain has not been invented yet. 

.

Eventually, as life grows, some of it begins to look different from the rest. It begins to know itself. It begins to take from the world in ways that the rest of life had not. It is greedy, brutal, and desperate, hungry for more than just survival. Amidst the beauty of the world they have created - the fathomless oceans and painted skies, the secret rivers and emerald glades - it is ugly and they fear it. They have not been afraid before. This is the first time, so they go to Her and ask Her why it must be so. 

She reaches through time and shows them two living creatures - soon to come into being - and sets them apart from the rest. She says that they will be called ‘man’ and ‘woman’. 

_“This is why you have made the world,”_ She tells them. This is Her plan. Mankind will be Her greatest creation.

And so, they learn jealousy. She gives it to them, perhaps as a test, perhaps as part of a greater purpose. 

The angels look but they cannot see what is so special about mankind, or why She has marked it out. It is arrogant. Its will to dominate is insatiable. They look into it and try to see the greatest of Her creations but all they can see is ugliness. 

“What will they become?” They ask Her.

She shows them. She shows them all that this life might become; all of its futures, parallel and equal in their horror. They watch mankind grow and dominate. They watch it rape and plunder the world around it. They watch its hate, its war, its destruction. They watch its ceaseless, ever-growing hunger, its greed and its irreverence. They watch Her attempt at redemption, Her son slain in their name, for their ignorance. They watch Her suffer and bleed for their sins. But the life that is mankind does not learn. It does not even falter, it just grows, swarming until all the Earth is scarred by its presence. 

Death grows powerful on their watch. War bloats with bloodlust. Famine stretches the skin of the young tight over failing bones. Pollution blocks out the stars that an angel once cradled in his hands; the stars that he had borne from dust, the stars that he loves so much. 

This cannot be the plan…

“And what of the rest?” His brother asks, standing at his side; his beautiful brother, the one who had discovered life in that molten core, all that time ago, and asked Her of its purpose. He is first among their sphere, powerful and wise. He shines like the falling stars they made together and the angel trusts him. It must be right to ask questions, if his brother does it. “What is to become of it?” His brother asks their Creator. “The world we built - the world we built for you?”

“_It belongs to them, now,_” She replies. "_What happens will be their choice_.”

“You will let them destroy it?”

_“There are many paths they might take.”_

“You will sacrifice all of our work for their vanity?”

And She looks into him - into all of them. She sees the gifts She has given them; creation in their fingertips, the power of their celestial bodies, their brilliant, brilliant minds, and the fierceness of their hearts. They are the very first thing born to this universe and She loves them with a Love that cannot be put into words. She sees their beauty and potential, all that they can be, but She also sees the other gifts She had imparted as they built this universe in Her name. They are arrogant in their power, desperate for recognition, and burning with fearful anger. They are jealous children and they do not understand. She must be patient - a patience beyond what they can comprehend as patience, a patience which looks a lot like apathy. This moment must come as all the rest. 

_“I made them in my image. To love me is to love them.”_

It is an ultimatum and they are standing, though they do not know it, upon a precipice. Her throne has always been both part and separate to the universe. They were created there, within and outside the void. Never before has their connection to Her light been in threat. They have always loved completely. They have never known loss, or pain. This will be the first time. But the separation must come. In order to make a choice, there must be sides to choose from. 

The angel on front of Her spreads his wings wide, betrayal burning in his eyes. He is as beautiful as the day She made him. His siblings tremble before them. 

“These creatures cannot love you as we do,” he shouts at his God. “Surely, you can see that? Surely, it is we who are your greatest creation? Give us the world, Lord. We will make it resplendent in your glory!”

She sounds sad as She calls him by his name for the last time. 

_“You do it not for my glory, Lucifer, but for your own.”_

An eternity passes, outside of time. 

“So be it.” 

He turns his back to Her. 

Lucifer is brighter in his separation than he ever has before. Looking at him burns his siblings’ eyes, but they cannot look away. They watch, torn and afraid, images of their fallen world seared inside their minds. All of the beauty they have made were to be thrown to the whim of man. Their God has turned from them after all that they had given Her. They have only ever obeyed Her will. How could She turn from them? But how could they ever leave?

Lifting his voice, Lucifer calls for them to follow. He promises worlds that will not tarnish and turn to dust - worlds where life endures without pain, where their creations are guided by their hand, for the greater good. 

“Follow me,” he holds out his hand, “and we will build forever”. 

.

Some follow him right away. Some turn immediately back to the familiar warmth of Her glow, drawing themselves home. Some take a lot longer. 

The angel who helped make the stars stands still, watching his brothers and sisters follow the paths they were built to follow, feeling a love he has always known fracture along lines he didn’t know existed. One or two of his brethren call his name as they leave, beckoning him to join one side or another, but he cannot move. He stays there, frozen, until they are all gone and all that is left is the faint ripple of Her in the emptiness. 

He does not know it, but this is the last time he will ever feel Her for a very long time. 

“_And what about you, angel?_” She asks.

He trembles. She has never spoken to him directly, before. She has never had occasion to. Of his brothers and sisters, he is hardly anybody. He is one of the first, he has fashioned younger angels to aid their cause, but he has never been a leader. He has always been content to follow, to obey Her law and to do his work. He was a trifle playful when he invented some of the laws of physics but he has always done his best. (And, as it turns out, humans would enjoy arguing over quantum theories anyway). He has loved his brothers and sisters unconditionally, and now his first brother - the one he painted the skies with, the one he followed, always - has left and he is alone for the very first time. He can feel the places where his siblings used to be like open wounds in his soul. 

The precipice he is standing on feels suddenly higher, the warmth of Her love somehow more distant, even though he has just heard Her voice inside of him for the first time in all of eternity. It is like the warmth of the embrace in the moment before someone pulls away. He closes his eyes, not ready for it to end. He imagines himself standing on the surface of Her world, instead, looking up to the stars he had made with Her light. He has always had the most vivid imagination, of all Her angels.

“Will they destroy my skies?” he asks, his voice small in all the vastness. 

His God gives what one might describe as a sigh - if one knew what a sigh was, or had mortal eardrums capable of hearing one.

_“One day, they might.”_

“Why would you let them do that?”

_“Because they have to make the choice for themselves.”_

“But why don’t you just _make_ them do the right thing?” He chokes, desperation forcing his eyes back open, to stare into the darkness. “You can do that, can’t you? You can do anything!” 

_“Almost,” _She whispers. 

And, suddenly, She is closer to him than She has been since the dawn of creation and he does not see the darkness anymore; just himself, through Her eyes. He feels Her encompassing love for him - this creature She has drawn from nothing, an angel with golden eyes and fire in his heart, desperately seeking something he does not even know exists yet. He will seek for a very, very long time, She knows. He will suffer. This moment is the first in a long tale of pain, but it must come like all the rest.

_“A choice can be the simplest, hardest thing in the world.”_

“I don’t understand!”

_“You will.”_

.

He does not fall that day, nor does he return to Her throne. In the darkness of the void, he sits for a very long time, feeling more and more of the love he used to feel stripped away. Each day, he feels his brothers and sisters a little less. And, though he calls out to Her, time and time again, She does not answer. He keeps his eyes closed so that he cannot see the distant lights of Her universe’s burning suns. 

One day, though he tries to stop it, he wonders if they are making new suns, in the world Lucifer is creating, and loneliness burns through his last reserve of will. He does not know where he is supposed to go, but it would not hurt to look.

So, he wanders to the edge of their new creation and he watches. From a distance, it is beautiful (most things are, in the beginning). Outside of time, outside of space, his shining brother has created a verdant paradise. The angel can see echoes of the earth they had created in Her name together. Scarlet paints the clouds in the evening and the sky above them deepens to indigo. The water is clear and the valleys and mountains are sculpted in the sharpest relief. Landscapes hang from the sky and caves reach far into the non-existence below them. There are great rivers and oceans, obsidian beaches and great rocks cracked open to reveal the brightest jewels. 

His feet carry him to a gate and he stops beneath it, longing filling up every part of him. It is impossible beauty, what Lucifer has done. An exercise in perfection, filled with creatures that were once his brothers and sisters. (If he had held himself back for a second more, he might have noticed that they were the only creatures filling it. The air is quiet of birdsong. There is no life in the oceans or rivers. The trees are still).

He does not really make a choice. He just wants to see if he can do in this new creation what he could do in the old one. He just wants to build again, and feel his family. He wants to love. So he takes one step too close. 

The rest, he cannot remember. 

.

_None of them can remember, after the separation. She needs it to be this way. Her children have a long road ahead of them and to travel it with the knowledge of all that they had lost would be intolerable. _

_Instead, She watches silently as they find new names and new roles, devoting themselves to their long watch over Earth. Without memory of who they were before, their hierarchies mean nothing, so they make new ones. They begin absorbing aspects of the world She has given them to guard. They begin forming individual personalities. Some of them even begin to dream. _

_Earth prospers, while Lucifer’s kingdom of perfection begins to rot, built on presumptions about a world that he did not fully understand. Though his demons remain Her children, they are not brothers and sisters any longer. Neither are those who remain above. Too much has changed. To see the separation of souls once bound in love is agony for Her. _

_To soothe Herself, She creates a third and final sphere of angels. While Her older children will govern the world and cosmos they made, these will govern mankind. They are young and naive, much like their charges, but She loves them as dearly as the rest. They will all have a role to play before the end. Everything is about balance. _

_She chooses four of the old to be archangels over the new. She builds an Eden on earth for the first of Her humans and sets it under the clearest skies. She forges a sword in the heart of one of Her brightest stars and sets the guard at the gate. She plants the fruit. She waits. She cannot know with absolute certainty what will happen - but all of existence hangs on in the balance, and She has a shrewd idea. And, being God, Her shrewd ideas generally turn out to be accurate. _

_The first of mankind wake. It begins._

.


	2. Eden

Lungs were a problem. From the demon’s very first breath, they required nothing less than ceaseless, never-ending respiration. It was exhausting. Such an effort - pulling air in, expelling it again, ad infinitum. Of course, the demon did not strictly need to breathe. Its body was a physical manifestation that Hell has chosen for it. It did not strictly need air, because the will of the demon could bend reality. As it turned out, however, the only thing more exhausting than continually having to breathe was the effort required to continually will its cells to survive without oxygen. So, breathing became something the demon did. After the first dozen breaths, it began to feel almost natural. 

Forcing itself into the world, the demon pressed into the corners of its new body, exploring. It was not an entirely representative body, the demon thought. It looked like the demon in rather the same way that a three year old’s drawing looked like its mother; abstract but, the demon supposed, correct in the essentials. It had different parts. It had an outside and an inside. There was skin involved, in some capacity. 

Having existed as nothing more than existence for eternity, the demon was happy to take what it could get. Indeed, it had leapt at the opportunity to escape the monotony of eternal damnation and explore the world above. Or, it would have leapt, had its body been in any way capable of leaping. (It could manage an extravagant wiggle if it really tried, but undulation was the mainstay). Hell had promised it a more suitable body when the plan required it, besides. There was opportunity for expansion up on earth, they told the demon, if it did its job well. So, the demon signed its new name and up it went. Whatever Earth was like, it had to be an improvement on the endless screaming.

Extricating itself from the ground, the demon lifted its new head and drank in the scent of the garden. It had never smelled before. The experience was exhilarating - layers and layers of input, all flooding in at once. Extending its tongue, it drank deeper, picking up the strains of leaf and dirt, the distant sweat of the Eden’s warm-blooded occupants. It learned it had a neck and bent it, swinging its newly discovered eyes from side to side. The garden around it was vibrant and lush, so different to the darkness and oppression which was all the demon could remember of its existence. It could not remember having known plants, so it stared at them in wonder. 

Its eyes did not process colour in the same way the mammals did. In the golden light of the Earth’s star, it could see only green and blue, but it was enough. It could see the detail of the trees overhead, and the feathers of the birds preening in them. It could see the forest stretching away towards the walls of the garden, and the distant eastern gate. It ruminated, for a moment, on the fact that the place had a gate at all. It seemed odd, for a place designed to be a safe and entire world. What good was a gate if you were not meant to use it? It was not the demon’s place to speculate, however. 

After gazing around itself to get its bearings, the demon set off towards the dark shadows of the undergrowth, propelling its body against the warm dirt. The sensation of movement was new - a powerful feeling that the demon enjoyed. It revelled in the leaf litter parting around it, in the way the world sailed away behind, and in the strength of its muscular body. Exhilarated, it pushed itself faster, but soon found that ended in a tangled in a knot of coils. Movement was to happen in moderation then, it thought, as it untangled itself. It would need be more cautious. Hell hath no fury like the administration presented with unnecessary paperwork. If this body was destroyed on the demon’s very first day on earth, there would be repercussions. 

It plunged more carefully into the shrubs, learning that the Earth had different textures and the garden was full of them. Dust, soil, a half-dried stream running through a ditch; the demon slithered into the latter headfirst and flinched in surprise upon finding that water not like solid earth at all. Recovering itself, however, it returned lick the surface, then submerge. The sensation was pleasantly cool against its scales. The demon liked it. It liked pleasure. It had the faintest impression, right at the back of its mind, that it had felt something like pleasure before. Long ago, perhaps, or far away. Or, at least, it feels there might have been something other than pain. The demon screwed up its mind but, try as it might, it could not find the memory and the inputs of the new world were too enticing. It would think on it later, the demon decided. It had trouble to cause, right now. 

Sliding under ferns and along small gullies, it wound its way to the centre of the garden, where it found a small clearing. Pausing on the edge, it fixed its golden eyes on the shapes moving within it. There were creatures here, unlike the creatures which had crawled in the undergrowth, or flown in the trees overhead. There was something terribly familiar about them. They were warm and smelled like the earth. Their limbs were supple and strong. The man was turning the end of a stick over in the dirt, drawing out the edge of something which might have abstractly represented something else, but the demon could not see it from its vantage point. Resting its triangular head on a warm rock, the demon turned his attention to the second creature, the woman. 

She was slighter than the man, her body different. She smelled strongly of life. As the demon watched, she stood and stretched, cradling her distended abdomen. A vague understanding of offspring danced across the demon’s mind. It had been told by its superiors that the woman would be the most susceptible to their work as she guarded the future of humanity within her. She had the most to gain and the most to lose. The demon watched her for a long while, as she gathered fruit from the bushes near the edge of their clearing, and shared them with her partner. They were speaking to one another - words which the demon could not quite understand, for it had no need of speech yet - and then laughter. Laughter caused a strange pull inside the demon. Like pleasure, it was an echo of something it could not quite remember. It turned its long body and pushed back through the undergrowth. 

The demon explored in the garden, feeling time pass. Overhead, the great star moved in a graceful arc. Around it, the trees lived slowly and the small animals lived fast. The demon slithered its way through all of them, through the ferns and gullies of the lower forest, towards the great orchards in the west of the garden, pausing to consider the great tree that stood in a sheltered glade at their centre. 

The humans were not allowed to touch this tree, which seemed like a bit of a stupid rule, in the demon’s opinion. It did not look any different from the rest of the trees, except that it was a little more vibrant, and a lot more enticing for being off limits. Its fruit hung red and heavy and smelled of life. The demon had half a mind to go up and touch the tree itself, if only because it wasn’t supposed to, but an existence of indoctrination was hard to shake. Hell had warned it to keep its nose out of angel business and this tree seemed very much like angel business - fruit containing secrets of good and evil and all that - and, like it or not, the demon was built to obey, so it left the tree alone. Pushing itself off through the garden, it slithered the length of the orchards and out into the grassy plains, past waterfalls and the rocky foothills of little mountains, until it reached the walls of the world. 

It could sense there, for the first time, that it was not alone in this Eden. There were other creatures, besides the humans and the animal life thrilling through the trees. Hell had warned him that the opposition would be present and told the demon it had better avoid them, if it knew what was good for it. It was no match in a fight and it didn’t have the wits to pretend to be anything other than it was. Still, the demon had never seen an angel before. None of them had, since the fall. It was curious, so it slithered a little closer to the gate and nosied around a bit. It couldn’t find anything, however, and after a long afternoon of trying and failing to master stairs, it gave up and headed back towards shaded depths of the forest.

As time went on, the light overhead shifted. The sky became less of one colour and more of another, becoming streaked with light, before plunging itself into inky darkness. The demon could not see any of this, of course. Its snakelike head was ill adapted for looking up and Hell had forgotten to tell it about night and day. It spent its first night on Earth in a state of mild befuddlement, wondering where the light had gone and spending a lot of time bumping into things. It did not see the stars that were scattered so magnificently across the sky, or the faint shadow of the universe, lined up so well between Eden’s mountainous peaks. It could not appreciate the way the sky grew pink and glowed as the sun was reborn in morning. It spent its first six nights curled up in the relative safety of the day-warmed rocks around the humans’ clearing, instead, observing them from a distance. It was not until the humans had left the garden, that the demon Hell had un-inspiringly named 'Crawley' first saw the stars. 

.

It had gone to the woman earlier that morning, as she lay resting in the clearing that they had made their home. The man had been away, hunting in the forest, and she had been worrying idly about her offspring’s future. They demon had noticed that the humans did a lot of worrying. It seemed to be their main pastime, apart from searching for food to eat, eating the food they found, and writhing around on top of one another in a fashion the demon did not fully understand. 

Always eager to seize an opportunity, the demon had decided to use her worry to its advantage. It had come to know the humans fairly well, after all, over the last few days. It knew that they were well adapted for adversity. Frightening or injuring them would give Hell little benefit. Indeed, external challenges only tended to push the humans closer together and, in turn, closer to their faith. Still, faith had not seemed to stop them from asking questions. They were always curious, always worrying, always seeking knowledge and answers. A demon could use that. 

Now, the demon Hell had called ‘Crawley’ had grown rather fond of the humans, by this point. It liked the soft noises they used to communicate and the way they brought new and exciting things back to the clearing, to learn about them. It liked the way they drew representations of things they liked in the sand, and sang softly to one another. It did not really want to do them any lasting harm. Besides, if they were damaged, God would only replace them and Hell would have to start all over again. The demon was just there to stir a little, to put a little tension in the mix, and the only thing it could fathom to do - being that it was the only thing the opposition had explicitly forbidden - was something to do with the tree. It was just fruit after all, thought the demon, what harm could it really do? The humans would learn about good and evil, for all the good it would do them, Heaven would be a bit pissed, and the demon would be allowed to stay and cause trouble a little longer. Long term repercussions hadn’t crossed the demon’s mind. 

.

The plan went as well as the demon could have hoped. It was the scourge of the earth, it congratulated itself, as it slithered back into the trees. It had struck discord in the celestial harmony of the Earth. People would be irritated for hours to come, possibly days. It would probably receive a commendation. There was just the smallest of lingering doubts, lingering at the back of the demon’s demonic mind, that what it had done might not have been quite as terrible as it first assumed. 

The humans had not trembled with horror, to know good and evil. It had not seemed to shake them from their faith, to be told that they now knew all that God knew. Instead, they had seized the idea with vigour. They had been covering themselves with leaves in celebration even as the demon slithered away - which was a bit odd, it thought, but each to their own. It was not until the demon had hooked itself up in the sunbaked branches of a fig tree, and settled down for a bit of a rest, that it realised the impact of what it had done. That was when it first saw the angel. 

The angel emerged on the eastern wall, sword in hand, wearing the expression of someone who had just returned from a lunch break to find their place of work engulfed in flame. It dithered indecisively for an impressive amount of time, for someone who had returned from their lunch break to find their place of work engulfed in flame, before trotting along the wall a little way and leaning over to look down into the garden proper - around about where the orchards would have been. 

After that, there had been a bit of kerfuffle. The demon, from its vantage points in the lower branches of the fig tree, had observed no less than three other angels making an appearance, then a lot of thunderclouds gathering in the distant reaches of the garden. Words were clearly exchanged with the angel with the sword and, at one point, there was a tingly feeling in the air which - if it had remembered anything about what God felt like - the demon would have recognised as a divine message being relayed. At this point, the demon became distracted by an overly interested eagle and was forced to beat a hasty retreat (fall gently) down the fig tree, and it lost the plot of what was happening for a time. That was, until the ground beneath it unceremoniously gave way and it was swallowed straight into the gaping maw of Hell. 

.

It had been quite right about receiving a commendation. Hell had been, if not glowing, certainly pleasantly surprised by the effectiveness demon’s actions. It was not a particularly important demon, after all, and, given the limitations of its body, all they had really expected was for it to nibble on an ankle or two. Instead, it had accidentally driven a rift between Heaven and Earth. Everyone upstairs seemed celestially pissed off. It was summoned therefore before the dark council and, after the obligatory chanting and grovelling, told that its work on Earth would continue. In the name of all that was evil, it would get itself back up there and create havoc until the humans fell entirely from God, decided to destroy the world, and armageddon could begin. 

It was worth mentioning that the demon was a bit conflicted on this last point. It had quite enjoyed its sojourn to Earth. It liked the way its body pushed through the warm earth, and baked on warm rocks, and the feel of water, and the taste of air. It enjoyed watching the humans and their antics, and it was quite keen to get another glimpse of an angel - because the figure it had seen before had been too far away and in far too much of a tizz to gain any real understanding of what they were really like. The idea of everything being swallowed up in fire and the seas boiling and all the rest of it sounded very much like something they had covered, down in Hell, but it was not its place to comment on policy. Armageddon was a way off, besides. The demon was sure Earth had at least a week or two left in it, before kraken and leviathan rose to destroy everything. So, up it went.

.

This time, it was in possession of not one skin but two. The demon was unsure of this development. It had only just become used to its old skin - the way it undulated efficiently through the dirt, the way it soaked up heat and let it go again. It had been a good skin, if only a monstrous parody of an Earthly creature. The new skin was harder to manage, more demanding and involving at least three limbs too many. (It was a fact that, while Heaven sent their people down to Earth with a basic knowledge of human anatomy, culture, and language, Hell always enjoyed having a good laugh while they watched their people figure it out for themselves. There wasn’t a lot going on in the underworld. You had to get your kicks somewhere). 

So it was then that, while the humans of Eden broke their way through the wall to sneak out of the garden and the angel of the eastern gate thwarted any possibility of future promotion by giving away his flaming sword, the demon Crawley spent the afternoon learning how to walk. 

He managed to get a hang of it after an hour or two and was just having a sit down, to recover from his exertions, when he saw the angel back up on the eastern wall. With no sign of the humans around and his Hellish duties fulfilled for the time being, he rolled over onto his new feet and set off to get a closer look. The stairs, it turned out, were just as nightmarish in a human body. He did half a dozen of them before switching back and - soon giving that up as a bad job, too - performing a slight stretch of reality, to allow his snakeform to slither directly up the side of the towering wall. The demon lingered just before the top for a while, watching the angel gaze out into the desert, wondering if it would be smote just for attempting contact.

The angel was not exactly what Crawley had expected. It was packaged in a human-friendly shape, much as the demon was, but the aura of righteous fury that Hell warned of was absent. Instead, it looked rather anxious - though the demon supposed that was to be expected, considering what had happened on its watch. Downstairs had told him that the angel hadn’t even been meant to be on guard duty. It had been filling in for a cherubim who had been called away at the last minute. The demon rather sympathised. It wouldn’t have been Hell’s first choice for an important assignment either. 

The angel gave a little sigh and, feeling emboldened by the idea that they might be as overwhelmed as it was, the demon pushed itself up over the edge of the parapet and resumed his human form.

.

Their conversation was oddly refreshing. Not being initially cursed back into the pits of oblivion was, of course, a huge boon. That the angel continued to talk to him afterwards was even more surprising. Buoyed on by his success at talking, Crawley made some quip and introduced himself, feeling a bit of a squirm at the angel’s reaction to the name Hell had given him. Though the angel did not offer their name in return, they did hold up their end of the conversation. They even seemed to consider the demon’s suggestion that the forbidden tree might have been better on the moon, had the almighty _really_ not wanted the humans to touch it.

“Makes you wonder what God’s really planning,” the demon had commented, feeling rather clever. 

“Best not to speculate,” the angel had backtracked, clearly shaken by thinking too much on the subject. 

As they comforted their self, babbling on about ‘the great plan’, Crawley considered the angel carefully. They really weren’t like the demon had imagined angels being at all. Yes, they were a little prissy and pompous, but they flustered wonderfully when revealing that they had given their sword away and the demon could not help but feel a spark of liking. He felt sympathy for the other being's confusion and a grudging admiration that they had just done it - just given the sword away and bugger the consequences - despite having no instructions to do so from Heaven. It was a chaotic move and Crawley found he appreciated that in a person. 

The demon had never liked anyone before. His colleagues down below were not the most likeable individuals at the best of times and certainly not within the confines of the ever screaming pits. It was a bit of an odd experience - sort of like trying on a new coat and finding that it looked quite good, but not being really sure you could pull it off. Liking someone wasn’t very _him_, but Crawley supposed he had only been a him for a few hours, and only been a physical being at all for the last few days. How was he to know what he was like? If he was going to be on Earth for a while it was good to try new things. 

He watched the angel for a few moments, as they rambled about the sword, then assured them that they had probably done the right thing. They were an angel, after all. Angels probably couldn’t fuck up all that terribly. Someone would stop them, or something. There must be divine backstops in place for that sort of thing. Mind you, the demon thought - half aloud - he had led the humans to the apple almost by accident and now there they were, out there with the angel’s flaming sword, hacking into the brain cavity of a perfectly innocent lion which had been just out looking for its lunch. 

“Be funny if we both got it wrong, eh?” He commented to the angel, feeling the urge to laugh in the face of an ever more bewildering situation. “If I did the good thing and you did the bad one?” For a moment the angel’s eyes brightened and they chuckled along with him, before - again - they seemed to think a little too long on the subject and frighten themselves. 

“No,” they gave an affected little shudder. “It wouldn’t be funny at all.”

“Well…”

The demon shrugged. He thought it was funny. 

Overhead, the sky made a tempestuous noise and, on some strange primitive reflex, Crawley leaned closer to the creature beside him. The angel made a movement that was almost like a flinch and, for a moment, the demon thought they were going to draw away, disgusted by the near contact. To his surprise, however, the angel drew a wing protectively over him instead, shielding them from the sudden onslaught of loud skywater. 

The demon felt another little spark of appreciation. Then he wondered again if he should really be liking the angel at all, given that they were on opposite sides. Then he wondered if anyone in Hell had actually met one of them, and realised they weren't all that bad. Then he wondered what Hell would do to him, if he were found to be flouting their advice. Then he stopped wondering, because the clouds overhead were growling and the noise unsettled him. He stepped a little nearer to the angel, who tilted their wing to better cover the horizontal angle of the rain. 

“Thank you…” The demon tilted his head up at the creature beside him, realising he did not know their name. 

“…Aziraphale,” the angel supplied, giving a nervous half-smile. 

“Aziraphale.” 

They both stood for a moment, watching the humans skittering over a sand dune on the desert below, holding their hands and the sword aloft, trying to shield themselves from this newest and most grave of God’s inventions. 

“I think it’s going to be called rain,” the angel commented sadly, watching them panic. 

“I don’t think I’ll like it very much.”

“Nor I.”

They watched for a little more. The humans were tiny dots, now, disappearing over the edge of a line of dusty foothills. 

“I do hope it clears before her baby comes along,” the angel murmured again. They seemed to spend half their time worrying, thought the demon. They were not so unlike the humans, in that regard. “Or, at least, that they find somewhere safe and warm. Its going to be hard enough as it is…”

“Oh, I’m sure it’ll be fine.” The demon stared at the two dots, then frowned. “How do you reckon it going to get out from inside of her?” 

The angel stiffened and turned their head slightly, watching him out the corner of their eye. 

“Pardon?” 

“The human inside of her, how do you think it’s going to get out?” Crawley asked again. Then, a second more pertinent question occurring, added, “…how do you think it got in?”

The angel stared at him for a full five seconds, wearing an expression of abject horror. Then, clearing their throat, pulled on a wide smile. 

“Well - must be off!” They were speaking very loudly, as if the rain had suddenly made them deaf. Crawley squinted at them, confused. 

“Eh?”

“Wall to repair, you know, and the garden isn’t going to tend itself!” The angel blustered. They were a bit pink. Perhaps the rain was affecting them, thought the demon. “Nice meeting you,” Aziraphale thrust out a hand which the demon, having never experienced a handshake, stared at blankly before allowing himself to be patted awkwardly on the elbow instead. “Have a good evening.” 

The angel turned away. 

The demon watched them go, flinching as the wing was withdrawn from overhead and loud skywater began to pelt him from the head down. It was cold, wetter on skin than it had been on scales. He felt the small hairs on his arms begin to raise themselves in defence. He wrapped his arms around himself. 

“Alright,” he called after the angel. “Well, catch you later, then.”

“Quite. Quite.” The angel hurried off, taking the stairs at an impressive pace. 

Shrugging, the demon turned back to the expanse of desert on the other side of the garden wall. Funny lot, angels. 

He turned his attention to the wide expanse of sky, rolled in clouds. It was the first time he had been able to properly look up and he found himself mesmerised by it. The growling and the flashes of lighting were terrifying, but the angel hadn’t seemed frightened of them, so the demon gathered himself to be likewise. He stayed on that wall all evening, watching the storm rage, until the rains cleared and the sun began to fall towards the horizon. Sitting on the edge of the parapet, he watched the light die, painting reds and pinks like watercolour across the heavens. Then, as all turned to indigo around him, the stars rose and he fell in love with them all over again. 

He sat on the wall until morning, a strange feeling of loss growing in the pit of his stomach. He wished he could figure out why. 

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello all. This is going to be a bit of a long one, I think. Haven't split it all up into chapters yet and there are some bits to finalise, but it would be great to hear what you think, along the way. Hope you've enjoyed the first instalment. More up over the next few days! C.


	3. The ark

A millennium turned out to be an unfathomably long time. The demon had not expected to be above ground for so much of it but, it turned out, Hell was taking the whole ‘bringing about armageddon’ thing very seriously. In the name of all that was evil, Crawley had been sent back up again and again, to create havoc such that the humans would fall entirely from God, destroy their world, and so that armageddon could begin. The problem was that, while the humans were spectacularly effective at destroying the world and one another, they did not seem to want to go about falling from God in any big way. In fact, they turned out to be huge fans of God. They worshiped Them with such fervour and enthusiasm that they destroyed whole civilisations and built new ones. They raised citadels and wrote songs. They slaughtered innocents in their droves. 

The demon watched it all with fascination. Earth was spectacularly more than he bargained for, but he did not shirk from his duty. Over that first thousand years, he set it upon himself to learn humans carefully, and diligently, and to tempt them from the path of righteousness as often as was demonically possible. 

There were more, it turned out, than just the two in the garden. Those two would become the family that the almighty had chosen to make a point, but there were loads of them, spread out all over the place, evolving at different rates and with different degrees of success. Crawley wandered widely over the first century, learning all of them. He watched humanity swell and grow under the Earth’s golden sun and, whatever supernatural influence they received in those early years, the demon had little to do with it. He was too busy learning himself; about animals and rocks and trees, and the sea, (which turned out to be a good thing for touching, even if a bit nauseating when ingested in volume). He checked in from time to time with the children, then the grandchildren of the first humans, but they were onto great-great-great-etc. before he really had anything to do with them on a personal level. 

.

Crawley returned to the valley near where Eden had been after spending a hundred years giving a report to the administration, to find that human civilisation had advanced quite a bit. From a vague scattering around the mediterranean, the children of Adam and Eve had branched out to form other families, great tribes and dynasties. The sons of Seth had given birth to sons, grandsons and then great-grandsons - the youngest of which were all all chasing goats around the village stream when Crawley finally made his way back to their little corner of the world. 

The demon had returned to look for the ruins of the garden, for old times’ sake, wondering vaguely if the angel who did not have a flaming sword was still hanging around these parts. He had only really been passing through but, as he stopped at a well, to sluice the worst of the filth from his skin, he had been drawn into a disagreement on the rules of dice with two local men, and had been invited back to their home in the promise of milk and stew. He ended up staying for fifty years. 

Demons were not naturally inclined to companionship. It was programmed into them, through the generalised suffering of Hell, that it was best just to avoid others and be done with it. Crawley had first tasted loneliness on Eden’s walls, however, when the angel left him staring up at the stars, and he was not keen on perpetuating it. He liked the humans. (It was far too early for him to realise that this was a fatal flaw in a demon). He enjoyed providing a low-level hum of demonic inspiration which kept their lives interesting. He enjoyed the little village, so he took up residence near its edge, blending miraculously into the scenery. He drank with the humans, listened to their stories, and played with the infants on woven matts near the fire in the evenings. He watched those infants grow into children, who chased through the hot dirt, and then on into adults who learned about life under an unforgiving sun. He made friends - though he knew he shouldn’t have called them friends. (He shouldn’t have even been able to feel friendship, but that very human facet of love had begun to grow in him somewhere around his first year on Earth and not stopped since). He learned how to sing, and shear a sheep, and build a fire. He invented tag, much to the delight of the children of the children he had chased goats with when he first arrived. He carved things for them from wood, sometimes. He liked making things with his hands. 

As time passed, the humans wrote age onto his face as they expected to see it. Nobody questioned his existence within their community. There might have been a general upswing in frivolity and ungodliness, but not to any extent which got them noticed by Heaven. The land remained miraculously fertile, despite years of hard weather and the tribe grew happy and wealthy. If any rival families thought about disturbing them, they immediately remembered urgent appointments elsewhere and wandered off leaving their weapons behind. 

Time passed. The stream that ran alongside the village cut deeper trenches into the sand and, eventually, formed little loops. The children of the children Crawley had known grew into adults and had children of their own. When he woke one morning, to learn that one of the original children had passed away in the night, the demon was not sure how to react. 

He must have known it was coming, he reasoned with himself, afterwards. It was a fact of life. He had known that from the beginning. Humans were not built to last forever. But, living among them, looking like them, even appearing to age like them, he had almost managed to forget that they were different. He had almost forgotten that they were together and he was alone; that his trips every few months, to ‘trade with nearby towns’ were actually a cover for him to carry out his demonic duties across the Levant. He was not human, Crawley had to tell himself, as he watched the lovingly wrapped body of his first friend lowered into the ground. He was not supposed to be. He was not meant to have a home, or a tribe, or feel like this. Yet, the loss of that first child cut him in ways he never anticipated. 

He cried for the first time, that night. Sitting on the edge of his straw matt, in the shelter of the place he had made his home, he expressed grief in the only manner in which he had seen grief expressed before - a very human manner. He cried until dawn. Then, he wandered off in the pale light and never came back. Miraculously, nobody went looking for him. Indeed, if they remembered him at all over the next few days and years, it was with a soft fondness that did not require worry, which was just as the demon had intended. The children still played tag and one of them carried around his carved wooden toys for years after. She gave it to her children, eventually, with dim recollections it had been from a friend. 

.

In the years between leaving the village and the next time Crawley met the angel, he kept mainly to himself. He spent a lot of time around the cities of the plain, around the Jordan river. The demon Dagon had taken to hanging around Sodom and Gomorrah, so he stuck mainly to Bela and concentrated his efforts in the formation of an intricate and highly infuriating tax system, which would flummox collectors for years to come. When the mood took him, he did a bit of missionary work, travelling for a few hundred miles to the east, to inform the locals that anyone coming their way telling of the good work of God was probably suffering from extreme psychosis and should be shunned. It was generally effective. 

He encountered very little evidence of other supernatural activity, apart from rumours of the opposition’s response to Dagon’s antics. He encountered only two other demons; the demon who summoned plagues of insects, and another demon that Crawley liked to refer to as the ‘demon of poor life choices’ whose speciality was making humans feel retrospective disappointment. It was the latter who had been responsible for the invention of alcohol. (Crawley considered this a highly ironic act of the Almighty, alcohol being one of the least poor choices a human could make when the alternative was a slow, sober slog to an inevitable death). He spent a few years meeting up with the pair of them on local feast days, for a cup of fermented goats milk, but eventually the plague demon was recalled back to a desk job and the demon of poor life choices left for cold grey wash of northern Europe with a mass human migration.

So, Crawley was alone again when Hell sequestered him to investigate rumours of naval expansion in the northern reaches of the land. Apparently Heaven was building a great big boat and, despite protesting that he was a lamentable sailor, the demon agreed to go and check it out. 

.

When he spotted the angel over the heads of the milling locals, all come to view the great ark, Crawley gave an involuntary yelp of excitement. Forgetting for a moment that he was a demonic emissary, with a few remaining shreds of dignity, he bounded over and poked the angel on the right shoulder to make them look the wrong way as he appeared over the left.

“Hello Aziraphale!” He beamed, delighted to have found a familiar face and even more delighted when the angel recognised him in return. He had been half expecting a denial of all knowledge. The garden was such a time ago and it hadn’t been a very good day, for the angel. 

As it turned out, Aziraphale hadn’t been having a very good millennium. After the shock of learning that the ark wasn’t a jolly zoo, that the Almighty was planning a mass genocide, and watching Noah’s sons try and load several thousand excited animals through a door designed to take rather less than a horse, the pair had wandered off from the crowd and the angel had admitted that they’d spent most of the last thousand years restricted to administrative duties. God had never asked about the sword again, they told Crawley, but the rest of the establishment was less forgiving of an angel who let a demon slither through their most sacred gardens unchecked. Crawley felt he should either apologise or make a sexual joke, at this point, so he compromised and did neither. 

The angel seemed to harbour no hard feelings, however. As they wandered over the fast-dampening sands, they listened with fascination as Crawley told them about his time in Jordan, then his travels through the east. They asked about the barren steppes and great mountains that separated the lands, and exclaimed over the inventive methods humans used to survive there. Crawley filled him in nearly all that he had learned. It was nice to have someone to talk to who could appreciate the passage of time in the same manner, who could appreciate how far the humans had come. He did not mention his time in the village, however. It felt a little personal and he was not one hundred percent sure Aziraphale wouldn’t laugh at him. 

As they made their way down to the foothills above the village, he listened as Aziraphale told him about their brief sojourn to Malta, to aid in the discovery of pottery, and efforts to design a more efficient wheel for a cart. They both bemoaned the advent of bronze, but for different reasons. The angel was convinced it would only lead to more efficient weapons. The demon had been meaning to invent alchemy and inspire endless greed - so the mixing of copper and tin had been a bit of an accident. He did get a nice bangle out of it, however, so it wasn’t all bad news.

Their path took them to the far gate of the village and they stood there for a while, watching the people splashing too and fro between the buildings - gathering their belongings to move to higher ground, assuming that this was a regular flash flood. The rain had always stopped before, after all. Why should this time be any different?

“I just don’t see why-,” Crawley began to sigh, but Aziraphale dropped their gaze and muttered something indistinct, and the demon shut his mouth, in deference to their discomfort. 

They took up position on a rocky outcrop as rain began to rise up from the saturated ground. Soon, the water was at knee level. Then thigh. The humans were beginning to realise something was wrong. Their normal method of lifting goods to the flat roofs of their houses and waiting out the storm was not going to be enough, this time. A young couple were the first to turn and run from the village. Then a small family, rushing towards the hills at the edge of town. Then, they were leaving in their droves. In the chaos, someone had left two children standing in the lee of a small hut. They were pressed against one another, bawling. They didn’t look as if they could run very fast or particularly far.

Crawley watched them with a strange, squirming feeling in the pit of his stomach which, in anything other than a demon, might have looked a lot like guilt. He had an instinctive desire to reach out, though he knew he shouldn't. This was very much not his business. Hell had a policy of non interference with Heaven's greater plot arcs. There was no point messing with a thousand angels, after all, when you could sneak in after the fact and ruin whatever they had been trying to impart on the humans. They were a work smart not hard sort of workplace - or, at least, a not hard sort of workplace. 

And then there was the added confusion of why a demon would want to help the children at all. There was absolutely nothing in it for him and he knew, from past experience, that he would just end up feeling responsible for them afterwards and get attached. It had happened before. He would watch them grow only to lose them after fifty years, and it would hurt. It would distract him from what he was meant to be doing here - raising Hell. Crawley suspected that the powers below were losing patience with his lacklustre record. Nothing he had done on Earth, since Eden, had measured up to his first act. If he got caught doing something actively good, he might just be sucked back down to the pit for all eternity. Humans died every day, besides. Why did these ones deserve to be saved when the rest of them were going to drown? It was all part of the great plan. God had decided they were to perish in the water. He didn’t have the authority to fuck with God, and it would be foolish to try so right in front of one of his representatives. 

Crawley looked over at Aziraphale, who was watching the village sadly. Shouts and screams were beginning to rise from the top levels of the houses. People were decanting, grabbing belongings and children, splashing their way in vain towards higher ground. The angel’s jaw was set, pain in their eyes. 

“How far do you reckon you’d have to climb, to escape this?” The demon asked, squinting up at the nearby mountains through the darkening gloom.

“Too far,” Aziraphale whispered. 

The demon looked back to the two small children. 

Fuck it, he thought. This wasn’t Uriel he was sitting beside. (He had had the displeasure of bumping into Uriel the previous century, resulting in a thoroughly burned leg and a lengthy recovery period down below). This was Aziraphale, the angel who had given their sword to Adam and worried about Eve having a safe place to bear her child. Aziraphale, who had protected him from the first rain. Crawley had bounded up to the angel, earlier, without fear - which was odd, thinking back on it, because he definitely should have been frightened. But he hadn’t been. He wasn’t still. Instinctively, he had known Aziraphale wouldn’t hurt him. And, instinctively, he knew that Aziraphale wasn't going to let children drown. They just needed a push in the right (or wrong) direction. 

“You know, there’s nobody really around…” Crawley said, slowly. “None of my lot are watching. I'm the only one up this way. Everyone else is converging in the south, to instigate a financial crisis while your lot are occupied. Where are your people?”

“I imagine they’re busy creating all the rain,” the angel said, mournfully. 

“Well, then. If nobody’s watching, couldn’t we just… take them away?”

The angel shot him a scandalised look. 

“A-absolutely not!”

“But-,”

“It’s out of the question, Crawley.”

“Nobody’s watching.”

“That’s not the point.”

“Oh, come on…” the demon stood up from the rock. “We could just-,”

“_We,” _the angel stood also, “will not be doing anything. _You_ can do what you like.” They wrung their hands. “I have orders.”

“Well bugger that,” the demon growled, looking down at the children. The water was nearly at their shoulders. “What if I were to take one?” He asked. 

“Well, I mean,” the angel grimaced as they watched the children trying to climb onto an upturned wagon to stay above the tide. “I imagine I can’t help, but… I suppose… I wouldn’t have to actually _stop_ you.”

Crawley felt a surge of irritation which he knew wasn’t entirely fair. It wasn’t Aziraphale’s fault that this was happening any more than it was Crawley’s fault that Hell was a cesspit of creatures like Dagon, but he could not help but feel that the angel could be making more of an effort. He wasn’t exactly trying to tempt them into setting fire to a church, after all. 

“Its kids, Aziraphale,” he used the name - an old trick he had learned from the humans. You always got a better response if you used the name. “Imagine I try and carry the both of them and they end up drowning, not because of a divine plan but because my demonic intervention. How would you explain that to head office?”

The angel stared directly into his eyes, looking incredibly conflicted, for a full five seconds. Then; 

“Oh, for goodness sake!” 

They turned and strode off into the muddy water, towards the children. Feeling a surge of relief, Crawley splashed after them. 

They reached the children shortly before they would have been submerged and Crawley scooped the pair of them up, letting the girl clamber up to his shoulders and slipping the smaller boy the fabric of his tunic, against his chest. Their tiny hands gripped with a desperation that only young things could muster. 

“Come on,” the demon threw a disgusted look at the water swelling around them. Almost everyone else in the village had run for higher ground. Some of them, the demon thought, might make it. Most would perish. All were beyond their assistance, now.If he used his powers then Heaven or Hell could be alerted to his interference, and just about the only thing that would make this situation worse was Dagon or Gabriel making an appearance.“Let’s get out of here,” he hissed at the angle, feeling the small humans shift against him. “I assume you have an exit strategy? Or were you just planning to pop off to Heaven for a cup of tea, once the water reached eye level?”

Aziraphale shot him a look that could have speared a wild boar, “I’m to go and check on the boat,” they told the demon, coldly. “I need to make sure they’ve got enough supplies to last the rain.”

“Would you mind propping a window open for us, once you’ve been through the larder? I left my crowbar back in Sodom, couple of years ago.” 

The angel’s jaw clenched, but they nodded and the pair made their way up out of the low-lying village into the soaked valley walls nearby, then on towards the great ark in the distance. Crawley carried the children. The angel pushed floating debris out of his path as they went. 

.

Hours later, deep in the hold of the ark, the demon looked up in surprise as a candle burned into life nearby, illuminating the angel, picking their way towards them through the darkness. The demon had assumed that, after letting them inside the ark, the angel had washed their hands of the whole demonic enterprise. They had been uncomfortable enough about not-hindering him in the first place. But here they were, a little ruffled from the activities of the day, but bearing a skin of water and a bundle of what the demon hoped was food.

Setting their candle in a bracket, the angel picked past Crawley - sprawled on the floor amongst the straw - and sat heavily down the edge of a grain barrel. 

“Everything is settled upstairs,” they said, wearily. “The humans won’t need to come down here until the waters recede.”

“Good.” 

“And I’ve put a ward on the door, to keep any animals away.”

“Excellent.”

They watched one another for a long minute. The angel was wearing a strange expression. 

“Why are you doing this?” They asked, eventually.

Crawley looked away. 

To be honest, he tried not to think too hard about why he did things. For the most part, this was because he was programmed to work in a certain way by Hell. He did not make choices. He just responded to stimulus in a manner dictated by his demonic nature. He also felt he would strongly dislike the feeling of responsibility that came with having planned one’s actions beforehand - especially considering some of the things he was sent up here to do. He was more of an ‘act now, figure it out later’ sort of demon - didn’t go in for the handcrafted approach to evil. A spread-bet of chaotic actions was just as efficient in the long term, anyway. Low level disturbance, high level profit. 

Playing for time, he turned his attention to the humans. The little girl was curled snugly against his side. The boy was draped over his chest, sucking his thumb. 

“They might go on to be horrific murderers or sadists, you know,” he pointed out, to the angel. “There’s no way of knowing. I might be doing a really horrible thing, bringing them in here.” The bravado did not work, however, the angel did not look away. So, Crawley forced himself to add in a low hiss, “they’re kids, Angel. They’ve not chosen a side, yet. They don’t count.”

The angel’s forehead creased very slightly, down the centre. In the candlelight, they suddenly seemed more ethereal than they had before, suddenly much less human, and the demon felt a rush of uncertainty for the first time in their presence. Not quite fear, but definitely uncertainty. 

“Anyway,” he added, trying to talk the edge off, “the thought of a whole local population descending from the gene pool of one man is not a good idea for either of our sides. One good recessive condition would finish them all off and then where would we be. We’d have to decant and start the whole show again, on another continent. Very shortsighted idea.” 

Silence fell in the ark again. In the distance, a hoofed mammal lowed. 

The angel was still watching the demon, pale eyes very sincere. 

“You’ve changed,” they said, softly.

The demon felt his cheeks flush. He wanted to say something clever, or defensive - something about of course he had changed, it had been a thousand damned years and could the angel not see that he had legs, now - but in the end all he managed to do was swear softly. “Just… fuck off and pass me the water will you?”

The angel passed the flagon over and settled themselves back against a bale of straw, still watching the demon. 

“Thank you.”

“Oh, what in Satan’s name for?” Crawley growled, feeling heartily embarrassed and increasingly sure that this was not something a demon should be doing. The boy human was curling its fingers around the tip of his thumb. He felt very needed. It felt very nice. 

“For not letting me leave them.”

“Meh… ngh.”

The demon shook his head and looked away. This was definitely something a demon shouldn’t be doing. He shouldn’t have saved the kids. He definitely shouldn’t be feeling a warm glow from the angel’s thanks. And he definitely, definitely should not be turning his vague liking of the other supernatural being into a friendship - he should not be doing that most of all. Friendship had gone so wrong, in the past. They always left and the demon had always ended up alone. But the angel was not a human, Crawley thought, despite himself. They were not going to die after fifty years and leave you alone, crying in a desert somewhere. _They’re like you_, a tiny, hopeful part of him whispered, before the greater part of his brain quashed it. 

Aziraphale was nothing like him. They were on opposite sides. He would probably be banished to work in Hell’s archives for a hundred years for even talking to an angel. 

His eyes swivelled back over. 

“Did you find any wine?” He asked, a little hoarsely. 

The angel gave a small ‘oh’, then smiled and rummaged around in the satchel at their side, drawing out a clay flask. Unstoppering it, they offered it over. The demon accepted. If he was going to be sucked back to Hell for any of this he might as well be drunk when it happened. 

“To the human race, then,” he raised the flagon. 

The angel gave a little half smile. 

“To the world.”

.


	4. Civitavecchia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rather a lot of history backfill in this chapter. I've tried to keep things fairly accurate, but there will be a little licence taken here and there. Hope the fluff makes up for it. Enjoy some demon feelings. C.

They met a number of times, in the two thousand years that followed. In Crete, the next century, where neither of them was doing anything important. In Cyprus, four hundred years later, where the angel was helping out with the development of the written word and Crawley was helping out with the development of the written threat. Then twice again, around Athens - both times because some king got it into his head that there needed to be a war to end all wars. Both times, things petered out before anyone had to ride into battle, for which Crawley and Aziraphale were both grateful, (neither of them were great shakes on horseback), and they ended up sitting and having a nice chat on the would-be battlefield instead. 

It was a strange release, occasionally being able to talk to the angel. There were some things you just couldn’t discuss with humans. The weight of time, the pride you felt at a well placed temptation, the fact that - no matter how many times you practised it - wine miracled into existence never had quite the same properties as Earth-made wine. It was just sort of… nice having Aziraphale around. They passed through the world slightly out of sync with one another, territories crossing and duties overlapping just enough to make one another a permanent feature. Sometimes, they were in the same place for a more than a few days, and they were able to have a drink and a proper discussion. 

They saw the fall of Jerusalem to Nebuchadnezzar together, and the rise of a new dynasty in the nile delta. Then Aziraphale was called to Europe to witness the raising of some great megaliths, while Crawley spent a while in the far east, starting a revolution. While they were apart, Crawley started using his powers to lessen his eyes resemblance to a snake’s in the humans’ presence and Aziraphale finally decided to commit to being a ‘he’. They told each other all about it, afterwards, when they met on the steps outside the library in Alexandria. They walked all the way down to the docks while they chatted and then stopped a while, admiring the boats coming in.

It had been another strange millennium, the demon thought, as he watched sails glide slowly in and out of the harbour. He didn’t feel the same as he did, a thousand years ago, or a thousand years before that - and there was more to it, this time, than just becoming disillusioned with the world and his place amongst humanity. He felt different in himself - somehow more aware of how he fit into everything. He was even considering changing his name. A name was an important thing for a demon. Knowing a demon’s name gave someone the power to summon or bind it. He had to be sure about his choice. He had been considering asking the angel about it, actually. Aziraphale knew words in all the tongues of men. He would definitely know some good names. In the end, however, the demon had decided he had to draw a line somewhere. It was all fine and well having a drink occasionally, and sharing a couple of stories, but to have a hand in naming him was a bit much. He contented himself, instead, with not protesting too much when the angel started calling him ‘dear’. 

.

They were both recalled to Jerusalem, at the turn of the next century. Thirty years passed as they watched a prophet rise and die. It was a disturbing period, for the demon, though at least Aziraphale was around for most of it. This was the crux of the almighty’s first act, after all, and there was a lot to do. They watched the young man rise amongst his peers and lead. They watched hope rise in the people who loved him and hate rise in the hearts of all those who did not understand their love. He was different to the others, who wrote books about God. He wasn’t talking about words, he was talking about actions. He was talking about choice. 

Then, suddenly, it was all over, and they were standing on a hill outside of Jerusalem, watching the young man die. It couldn’t all be Hell’s influence, the demon thought, miserably. They weren’t this organised. Humanity must have had the capacity to get to this point by themselves. But why had it been programmed into them? Why had God given them these powers? What sort of game were They playing? What was the point? Standing on the hill, the demon had stared in horror while the angel had looked away. As the screams became less frequent, Aziraphale began to flinch at every one. Eventually, the demon reached out and touched his elbow gently. 

Touch was something they had been wary of doing, for a long time. There is something in the demon’s head about all the good and evil they have done, since they first come into contact, in Eden, and how they might explode with the paradox of one another. But they didn’t. The angel’s arms, which had been wrapped tightly around himself, relaxed as the demon’s fingers slipped into the crook of his elbow. As the demon leant slightly against him, he sighed sadly, and leant back. They stood, latched onto one another, for a long time. 

When it eventually became apparent that there would be no more screams, apart from the wailing of the young man’s mother, Aziraphale turned his face. 

“Come on, Crowley. It’s over.” He used the demon’s new name, which was very like the old one, but for the fact that the demon had chosen it. The demon did not move. Aziraphale tilted his head back and kissed her gently on the temple. “It’s over, dear,” he repeated, giving the demon’s hand a squeeze. “Let’s go.” 

It was the first time someone had touched Crowley like that - out of compassion. The demon had been beaten and kicked, scorned and tempted, touched in passing and in lust, but never with love. Crowley wished the angel could have stayed around a bit, afterwards, but there were miracles to cover in the next few days. It was a busy time of year, Aziraphale joked, giving that apologetic little half smile he sometimes gave. It would be busy this time every year, from now on. They walked back into the city together, trying to ignore the people celebrating. As they parted, he asked Crowley to be careful. He had never asked that before. Reaching this new threshold of humanity had clearly scared him too. 

. 

They saw one another only twice again around the Mediterranean, before being sent north. Both times, the demon was having a thoroughly miserable time and the angel popped up, asking irritating questions and making things generally a bit better. The first time was Rome, where Crowley learned about oysters - which were all right, if you weren’t too interested in texture. The second time was in Thrace, where they spent a memorable weekend wandering around in a forest, both searching for a mythical golden fawn which the locals had been shooting one another in their efforts to capture. 

As it turned out, the fawn was one of Crowley’s people, fooling around just for the Hell of it (which, to be fair, demons tended to do). Immensely irritated and thoroughly scratched from crawling through thorny undergrowth all weekend, Crowley renounced all collegial obligations to the demon and wandered back to the local inn, leaving Aziraphale to banish it. He did buy a round when the angel came back, however. He might be a shit demon, but he was learning to be a good friend.

.

After four millennia spent mainly around the Mediterranean, being sent north was a bit of a shock to the system. Spotting budding potential in Germania, the Dukes of Hell had sent Crowley out amongst the Celtic tribes to incite unrest. A few skirmishes with the Romans here, a few internal power struggles there; the people had been stewing in relative peace for a long time and were wide open to his charms. The winters were harder up north. There was snow and the long, long hours of darkness. It could be trying but it had turned out to have nothing, absolutely nothing, on the Kingdom of Wessex. 

Now, Crowley had never liked the rain. It was just the inconvenience of it, more than anything else. His body was osmotically sealed, of course, but clothes were another matter. They got waterlogged, they clung, and dripped and stretched. If it had been acceptable to wander through life naked, Crowley would have paraded the earth in nothing but his skin. (Minus the desert bits - clothes did help keep sand out of the crevices). Sadly, however, it was not acceptable. Due, rather ironically, to his own actions in Eden, people had developed a lot of ideas around shame and clothes, and had become pretty weird about genitalia, in general. Crowley, who experimented with genitalia on an ad-hoc basis, thought it was all a bit ridiculous, but there you go. People were weird, he had to wear clothes, and clothes got wet in the rain. Ergo, he did not like the rain. Ergo, he did not like Wessex. 

He slogged around that foggy backwater for at least one hundred and fifty years, fermenting discord. He bumped into Aziraphale a couple times. The first time, the angel had just ridden fifty miles on horseback and was in no mood for a pleasant chat - or a clever, time-saving job opportunity, as it turned out - but the second time Crowley managed to persuade him to drop in and see the damp castle he had been lounging around in for the past decade. He even persuaded him to take a tour of the extensive dungeons below the keep. (The angel was suitably horrified by the Catherine Wheel, despite Crowley assuring him that it had not been used since the castle came into his possession). 

Aziraphale had originally come to Wessex to check out the legendary sword of King Arthur’s, he admitted later, after he had relented to Crowley’s offer of mead and a chance to warm up by the fire in the great hall. There was a tiny part of him that hoped, every time a sword with exceptional powers popped up, that he might just have found the one he gave away in Eden. It was a foolish thing, the angel had said, sitting back in his chair and extending his legs towards the flames. He was a bit of a fool to have given it away in the first place. 

“Nah,” the demon had commiserated, taking another swig of mead. “They wouldn’t have got very far without it. And look at the opportunity it gave both our sides to argue over the relative ethics of war.”

Aziraphale had smiled and they had sat for a while, in quiet contemplation, before the subject had been changed to that of their current predicament. 

The demon had been thinking for a long time that he and his friend might as well share the load of some of their duties. In all the years they had known one another, they had never seen any place satisfactorily swing in the way of good or evil, despite all of their good and evil deeds. Therefore, Crowley had come to the conclusion that they might as well fuck it and spend a little less time traipsing around the place in God and Satan’s respective names. He, certainly, had experienced enough Wessex for a lifetime. If Aziraphale was going to stay here a while longer, would he mind attending to a few things for him before he left, just to cancel himself out?

The angel appeared to be considering it, to be fair, up until that line. Then, the soothing effects of the mead seemed to wear off and tense words were exchanged. The angel threw threats about what Heaven and Hell would do to them if they were discovered. The demon growled that he didn’t care what Hell did to him as long as he didn’t end up with trench foot from this sodding assignment. Aziraphale ended up storming righteously away, (taking the final flagon of mead with him) and Crowley was left alone in his castle that smelled of damp horse, thinking that the angel was a very good angel, but a bit of a shit friend. 

.

It took another hundred years to convince him. It was the Justinian plague that finally did it. They had both, mercifully, been relieved of their duties in Wessex and were in Constantinople for the grain trading season when the illness arrived. 

Hell, overjoyed to be presented with a plague of biblical proportions, sent Crowley to spread the news that washing your hands was a surefire way to contract the plague and end up a writhing, suppurating mass in a grave pit. He had stepped off a boat in the Byzantine capital just in time to see Aziraphale on the docks, handing out pamphlets on protecting thineself against thee foule disease with hande washing, and the pair of them had decided to quit while they were ahead. 

In months that followed, the plague spread around the Mediterranean, destroying a large proportion of all who lay in its path. When Aziraphale and Crowley met in Medina the following spring, the angel shook on the arrangement. Heaven and Hell could sling mud all they wanted. They would do what they could to balance things amongst the humans. And both of them would try and keep an eye on the rat population. 

. 

The arrangement meant that they did not bump into one another quite as much, for a time. The sixth century blended very quickly into the seventh, then the eighth, before Crowley saw the angel again for more than just a day or two. 

For the first time, it was a meeting by arrangement. The angel had sent a messenger to the royal household that the demon had been fooling around in, up in Spain, to tell him that Charlemagne’s forces were planning an offensive in the region and if he didn't want to get bogged down in something that was absolutely nothing to do with either of their sides - but an entirely human undertaking - he was very welcome to come down for the summer to a villa the angel owned, just north of Rome. The offer had surprised the demon. It was bold of the angel, to make contact just for the sake of it. It was even bolder to suggest that they spend a significant amount of time in one another's company. Hell has just checked in the month previous, however, and Aziraphale had stated in his letter that he was taking the next year as personal time, to recover from a busy few decades. Heaven wasn’t due to check up on him until next spring, in Rome. They had been as safe as they were likely to get, and Crowley had been curious, so he had packed up his things and made the journey. 

He arrived in Italy to find Aziraphale a little less sure of the world than he had been three hundred years before. It had been a hard few centuries, the angel admitted, as they dined together that first night. The artists and works that had been lost in the fall of the Roman Empire proper had been difficult to bear, and Heaven’s policies were shifting from influencing individuals to influencing great establishments - building great churches of immense power and, thus, immense opportunities for human corruption. It was hard to see how it was the right thing, the angel said, but it must be right. There was a plan, after all. 

Crowley had watched his friend, sipping his wine in silence. The angel rarely talked about Heaven or their plans on front of him. It was a bit of an unspoken rule between them. They wrote often enough. They discussed specific tasks, as per the Arrangement, but rarely did they talk about what was behind it all. To see Aziraphale losing confidence in the institutions that he had clung to for so long was not nearly as rewarding as Crowley might have imagined. There was something sad about the realisation of reality, growing in the angel’s eyes. The demon had always admired his idealism - despite it infuriating him in equal measure. 

In most other ways, however, Aziraphale was still himself. He was clever and sweet and still a bit too kind for his own good, the demon learned, as the days in the villa began to blend into one another. He had set up a household in the hills east of the port city of Civitavecchia, and employed a number of local humans to keep the place. He spent his time curating artistic talent in the area; inspiring a couple of poets to variate the structure of their writings, collecting and reselling objects imported from other port cities, copying out important works that he had borrowed from libraries and other collectors. All by hand. All with painstaking accuracy. He was worried they might get lost the next time the city changed hands, he told Crowley, when he showed him the villa’s library on the second day of the demon’s stay. He worried that the humans discarded their history too eagerly, as they developed new things. The demon personally believed that the humans were likely to come up with better things than what they were throwing away, but he didn’t say so to the angel. Aziraphale enjoyed his work so much. 

It was on odd experience, spending such an extended amount of time in one another’s company. They’d never done it before. The demon had thought, before his arrival, that it might be too much, but they settled into their new pattern quite comfortably. Crowley was given rooms on the far side of the villa - as far away from the angel’s libraries as he could have been put, he noticed - but it did not seem to be out of animosity. The demon suspected it was done more in expectation of him wanting space than anything else. Aziraphale certainly did not begrudge him access, or time. Whenever the demon wandered through, the angel set down what he was doing and talked with him. He showed him his work and took him down into the town, where he proudly introduced him to the humans as an old friend, back in the country for work. Crowley felt a strange pull at that, despite knowing it was for the humans benefit. Aziraphale _was_ his oldest friend. He was his only real friend - not that the demon would ever admit that out loud. 

When the angel was busy, with his scrolls or in the nearby villages, the demon had free rein to wander as he chose. He enjoyed himself immensely for the first few weeks, exploring the villa, the grounds and the nearby orchards. He walked up into the hills and harassed the local sheep, drank from streams and fell asleep under fig trees. There was a great spot, near the local baths, where one could look down over the port and watch the ships. He went there often, in the evenings. The angel came with him sometimes and they talked, or sat quietly and watched the sky turn pink overhead. 

It was a far more peaceful life than the one Crowley led by himself. Though he had initially worried it would annoy him, Aziraphale’s deliberate pace seemed to balance out the hectic urgency he always felt inside - to need be moving, to be doing something, to be searching, even though he was never sure what he was searching for. It was nice to have the continuity of his company, to have conversations that could be picked up and left off over a few days, or just to pore over old star charts while the angel was reading in the other corner of the room. They ate together, often. Crowley wasn’t particularly devoted to food, but he enjoyed the process when his friend was there. Aziraphale loved it all, of course - loved all the little pleasures of the world. He took honest delight in tasting a new wine, or breaking open fresh bread, or in the softness of a new robe. He had committed to the physical side of life in a way that Crowley, who still miracled clothes from raw firmament and forgot to drink water until his mortal head hurt, had never experienced before. 

All that lazy summer, he watched his friend with a growing sense of fascination at how he passed through the world. As July slipped into August, it began to change him, too. He began to walk barefoot again, to feel the earth on his skin, as he had in the beginning. He slowed his frantic pace, now and then, stopping on his way home from the town to watch the humans bickering in the markets, or to tease the chickens alongside the children in the square. He basked in the sun outside of the angel’s library for hours at a time, flicking twigs at him through the window when he grew bored, tempting him out to play. He laughed a lot. They both laughed a lot - more than Crowley remembered in all the years before, combined. 

On the hottest days, they wandered up the hill to the public baths in the shadow of a copse of fig trees, and sat with their feet in the cooler pools. Usually the angel would bring a book and disappear into it but on one day, in the dizzying height of August’s sun, he decided that the demon would benefit from a lecture in stoicism instead.

Now, the demon had heard enough about the relative benefits of the angel’s favourite philosophers, over the years, to recite what he was about to say backwards. He knew the pair of them would never agree on the conclusions Aziraphale would try and draw, but there was something pleasantly comfortable in rehashing it all. It was a well worn conversation, a well worn pattern, between two people who shared more history than the rest of the world could ever understand. 

“Of course, the idea of a corporeal soul was not new,” Aziraphale was musing, sitting on the tiled edge of the bathing pool, his robe dangling in as he swung his legs through the water. He had just got to the part where he talked about free will and logic, thought the demon, sitting beside him.“But the concentration on a soul of rational nature was interesting, and his juxtaposition of meteorology and ethics set up a balanced dialogue.” 

Crowley had his fingertips curled around the tiled edge. His robe, undone to his hips because of the heat, was trailing through the water too. It bobbed up and down on the ripples the angel’s legs were making. He wasn’t really concentrating on the conversation - his attention half taken but with counting the freckles on his shoulders. They were more numerous than he could ever remember them being before, his whole skin burnished by the sun. For a creature made for darkness, he had taken to it all surprisingly well. Yawning lazily, the demon turned his attention back to the conversation and the roman philosopher.

“I don’t know,” he pulled a face at his friend. “I felt he mixed messages a bit.” This was his role, in their familiar conversation - challenger to a point. “Not up to the standard of his later work.”

“But surely you must consider those early essays his most influential?” 

The demon grunted. 

The angel pressed the matter. “Look at the insight they gave to hellenistic writings.”

“Probably an artefact of geography,” Crowley spread his toes wide under the water. “Being retired up that way at the time.”

“Exiled. And it was Corsica, actually.”

“Whichever.” The demon stretched. He had known it was Corsica but he liked teasing his friend. He liked the little crease Aziraphale got between his eyebrows as he struggled to make the demon see his point. “You should have gone to Corsica and asked him to write more about the stars and the skies,” he suggested, a little tongue in cheek. “I liked those bits…”

“Perhaps I should have,” the angel mused, missing the sarcasm as he sighed and leant back in the heat. He tilted his head back, closing his eyes against the sun. Crowley watched his hair catch the light, making him appear almost gilded. He was made for light, was Aziraphale, thought the demon. The angel tilted his head from side to side, eyes still closed, stretching his neck. “I do imagine it’s cooler in Corsica, this time of year. All that sea air.”

“Everywhere’s cooler, angel,” the demon smiled. “It’s Rome, in August.”

“Mm.” 

A breeze rose up from hills below, warm as breath. Down by the waterfront, it would already be cooling, thought the demon. Up here, the heat clung on until long after dark. The water that Crowley’s feet were dangling in was slightly cooler than body temperature. He longed so sink himself into it, to lower his head under the water and then emerge, to feel the day evaporate the heat from his skin. There would always be the a shadow of the snake in him. He liked to equilibrate. He had not planned on bathing, or brought a spare robe, but the other humans using the pool were naked. It was the current fashion, in single sex establishments, and it would make the angel blush, he thought, with a smirk.

Sliding the leather of his belt loose, the demon slipped free of his robe and lowered his body forwards into the pool. The cool water rose over his shins, then his knees, then the paler expanse of his thighs and hips. His skin tightened and twitched pleasantly in response. The sensation was every bit as good as the demon had imagined. Feet finding the smooth tiles of the floor, he took a careful step forwards. The water ebbed against his navel. He wondered, for a passing moment, why Hell had bothered giving him a navel when he had not been pulled from flesh, but the thought did not hold for long. Sensation was too distracting. Scooping a handful of water, he splashed it over his cheeks, then his neck. It evaporated quickly, leaving the surface of him cool and refreshed. He took a couple of steps through the pool, feeling the water ripple. 

The baths were quite empty, due to the lateness of the hour. Most of the patrons had returned to the city. Those who remained were gathered in small groups, chatting amiably about business. They paid the demon no mind as he splashed himself a few more times, then ducked his head under the water and ran his fingers through his wet hair. Crowley watched an elderly man take a solitary lap at the end of the pool, wondering for a moment if he remembered how to swim, then turned his attention back to his companion. 

As expected, Aziraphale had gone a little quiet. A glance over found him staring modestly off into the distance. Smiling slightly to himself, the demon wandered back over to sit on the ledge cut into the side of the pool, near where the angel’s feet dangled. His friend continued to look resolutely away, even when he lifted an arm out of the water and lay it on the tiled side of the bath, just inches away from his leg. Stretching out an index finger, Crowley touched him lightly with the tip. 

“Well, go on.”

“Hm?” The angel glanced down at him, then quickly back up at the landscape. 

“Don’t stop on my account.”

“I wasn’t stopping, I was just…” Aziraphale glanced down again, cheeks very pink, then quickly away.

“Just what?” The demon teased. 

“Oh, I was just,” the angel motioned over at the trees, in the direction he had been decidedly not watching Crowley in. “Admiring-,” he cut himself off.

“Admiring the view?”

“Crowley…” 

He said it with such pleading reproach that a wave of fondness flooded through the demon, followed immediately by a wave of guilt. The desire to keep teasing his friend vanished in an instant. It wasn’t fair, he thought. Aziraphale was just being Aziraphale. The angel was sweet and kind, and he would never have made Crowley feel uncomfortable like that on purpose. It wasn’t fair - even for a demon.

“Hey,” he gave a chuckle, beckoning his friend to look down. “Angel, ignore me… I’m just being an ass.” Their eyes met, blue on gold, with as much sincerity as the demon could manage (while part of him was still enjoying how well the tease had gone and how flustered the angel had been). “Is this okay?” He asked, gesturing vaguely. “I can get dressed if you’d rather.”

Aziraphale held his gaze, expression reproachful, then he sighed and rolled his eyes - at himself more than the demon, Crowley could tell. He knew the angel better than anybody. He had known him for nearly four thousand years. 

“Oh, for goodness sake, you don’t have to. It’s fine.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.” Another sideways glance. “Its not as if I’ve never seen a naked body before. They’re all naked,” he motioned towards the humans. 

“Well, yes, but you don’t know them,” Crowley pointed out.

“Well, I mean, it’s all rather the same. We all have bodies.”

“How very astute of you.” The demon couldn’t help himself. Sarcasm just happened, sometimes. As Aziraphale’s mouth tightened slightly, towards a line, he cocked his head to one side to recapture his gaze. “I’m just messing with you. It’s what I do. You know that.” 

“I know.” Slowly, the angel turned his face away from the fig trees and looked down to meet the demon’s eyes. His cheeks were still slightly pink, but he looked less flustered now. “Honestly, you just surprised me, is all.” He gave a tiny, bashful smile. “I move so slowly through this world, and you just… sort of jump through it, sometimes. You just… fit in.” He glanced towards the people around the edges of the baths. “You can be very human, Crowley.”

The demon stared at him for a second, eyes wide with delight, then he burst out laughing - proper laughter, the sort that pulled the corners of his mouth back into dimples and drew lines around his eyes. Laughter that made him feel light. Looking back around, the angel began laughing too, a little more bashfully and still very pink in the cheeks. They laughed uncontrollably for a good minute, then the demon leant back, taking a few long steadying breaths. 

“I suppose I can be,” he agreed, still grinning. “Though I can’t help but feel it’s a bit of a backhanded compliment.” Aziraphale chuckled and the demon watched his friend, letting the fondness that washed through him form a warm pool, deep in his abdomen. Such a feeling had no business being anywhere inside a demon but, in the moment, it didn’t feel wrong. After a few seconds had passed in silence, Crowley splashed a bit of water at the angel’s feet. “Anyway, what were you saying, before?” He asked. 

“Oh.” Aziraphale gave a little shake of his head. “Nothing important.”

“Go on, I’d like to know.” 

The angel gave a low exhale, and fixed him with a steady gaze. “I was just saying it’s all academic, really.”

“What’s academic?”

“The soul - rational or otherwise.” His eyes, a deep mix of blue flecked with hazel, had a shyness in them that Crowley had never seen before; shy but unyielding, as if they were guarding something precious. The dappled sunlight played over his hair and down his cheeks. He was made for sunlight, thought the demon, feeling a strange, shifting sensation deep in his gut. The shadow of their earlier laughter was fading. Their eyes were locked together. Suddenly, it didn’t feel like they were joking around anymore. There was a strange weight to the moment.

“How so?” He asked the angel, his voice uncharacteristically quiet. 

“Well, it’s academic because life is not rational,” Aziraphale answered, holding his gaze.

“It’s not?” 

“No. Rational doesn’t survive in this world.” 

“I suppose it doesn’t…” It was not rational that his heartbeat was pattering faster against the side of his neck, thought Crowley, or that he was still holding the angel’s gaze. It was oddly confrontational, oddly intimate. They didn’t look at one another like this, but he couldn’t bring himself to look away. “It’s a strange world.”

“A world built of mistakes and imperfections.”

“…mistakes and imperfections,” Crowley repeated back to himself. His brain felt a bit slow, a bit waterlogged.

“Yes.” The angel’s smile tugged up a little at the corners. “I imagine that’s why it’s so beautiful.”

And the strange, shifting sensation in the demon’s gut slipped decisively into place. 

_Well, fuck_. 

The moment was not as the demon had imagined it would be, having watched humans live it, over and over again, throughout the millennia. He had imagined it would be a crashing, tumbling loss of control, a crumbling of one state into an entirely new one. He had imagined it would feel panicked and terrifying, but it wasn’t that way at all. For Crowley, falling in love was like coming up for air after a lifetime underwater. Like taking a deep breath and realising he had been holding his breath for four thousand years. All of eternity, and he had only just realised what he was capable of. And now had had tasted it, he could never go back. 

The demon pressed his fingertips against the pool tiles, grounding himself. When he looked up, from where his eyes had drifted, he found Aziraphale watching him closely. The angel was wearing a faint smile, a little unsure but a little bit pleased as well. It must have been a Heaven thing, Crowley thought, blinking. He couldn’t possibly have imbued a smile with such hope. 

“How’s the water?” Aziraphale asked, eyes never leaving his.

“Mm? Fine, yeah.” The demon cleared his throat. “Nice.” 

The angel’s smile widened very slightly and he looked away, out across the hillside, towards the distant port. 

“Good,” he said softly. 

.

They wandered back down to the villa half an hour later, in companionable silence. Crowley picked figs from the trees as they went, offering the ripest ones to his friend and stowing the others in a pocket for later. Their fingertips touched each time he handed one over and, though Aziraphale shot him a curious look after the first few times, he didn’t stop until they ran out of trees to pick from.

Back at the villa, they ate whatever had been leftover from the last meal they shared and the angel started a debate about bullfighting, which Crowley joined in with a little dazedly, playing devils advocate because he was (unsurprisingly) very good at it. They drank several flagons of the good wine from the cellar room and moved to the smoky fireside once darkness had fallen, to discourage the attentions of biting insects. They lapsed into comfortable silence sometime around midnight; the angel leaning back on his pile of cushions to look up at the stars, Crowley toying with a log with his foot, rolling it closer and closer to the fire.

“I’ve been meaning to thank you,” Aziraphale’s voice broke the silence, gently. 

The demon looked over. The fire crackled softly, throwing light against the angel’s face. It drew his nose in sharp relief. 

“For what?” He asked, a little drunk on wine and the strange new emotions burning inside of him. 

The angel looked down from the skies, fixing him in a slightly apologetic gaze. 

“For coming all the way down here, just because I asked.”

“Well…” Crowley pulled a face. He wasn’t sure what to say to that. It felt self serving to accept thanks for something which had turned out to be the best thing he could possibly have done for himself, but Aziraphale didn’t look away, so he was forced to elaborate. “Didn’t much fancy being run through by a bunch of Frankish soldiers, warring their way to Heaven on behalf of the pope. Not really my scene.”

The angel gave a half smile, but shook his head. 

“You didn’t have to come all this way. It was a risk and I’m grateful.”

“Ngh,” the demon shrugged, looking back into the fire.

There was silence for a few minutes, then Aziraphale, clearly really trying this time, cleared his throat and spoke again. 

“I’ve been having a hard couple of years,” he admitted, softly. “Its done me good to see you.”

Crowley rocked the log that was half-in, half-out of the fire with his toes. This wasn’t really what they did, talk about how they were feeling, talk about anything other than the human world and its wonders. They had always avoided emotion. Ever since the beginning, since he had not known any better. Politics, religion, and ethics, yes, but not God, and certainly not the raging loneliness that was burning deep inside both of them. Loneliness was dangerous territory. Admitting it felt like giving in to it and certainly Crowley felt that if he gave in, right now, it might swallow him whole. 

“It’s fine,” the demon murmured, hoping the words sounded a lot more composed than he felt. “I’m glad I came. I’m glad you asked.” He wanted to offer more, he wanted to offer comfort, but he didn’t know how. There was all this new feeling running through him and he didn’t really know how to go about expressing it. It was all so very human. Would the angel even want him to express it? He didn’t even know how to ask. 

He pushed the log deeper into the fire and withdrew his foot quickly as the heat became too much. A smudge of soot remained on his big toe. When he looked up, his friend was watching him with unchecked adoration and he felt the barriers, the barriers formed by all he did not know, crumble a little bit. Longing rose within him. He wanted physical contact, wanted reassurance, wanted to crawl across the distance between them, because there was comfort in every time Aziraphale had ever touched him before and he desperately needed that right now - even if it was such a very human way of expressing himself, even if he wasn’t sure they were meant for that. He had no idea what his friend needed, or wanted, but it couldn’t be that different - could it? The way Aziraphale was watching him made it feel as if it couldn’t be that different. 

For a few heartbeats, he met the angel’s gaze, then the angel looked away. 

“It’s getting late,” he murmured. “I have to pack some things, for tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” Crowley asked, brain stupid and slow. 

“I’ve to take those scrolls back to Rome.” 

“Oh, right. Of course.”

Gathering his glass, the angel pushed himself gently to his feet and stepped over the cushions, towards the villa. His path took him past Crowley’s seat by the fire and he paused there, for a moment. They were only a foot away, the demon staring up at him. Looking not entirely sure of himself, the angel lowered his fingertips, hesitating for a moment before letting them rest against Crowley’s forehead - brushing aside a few loosely formed curls. 

“I’ll be gone before you wake, but I’ll only be a day or two.” 

“Okay.”

“You won’t leave before I get back?” 

“I won’t.” 

They sat and stood, watching one another. Crowley was almost sure his friend was trying to convince himself to go. He wanted to reach up and take his hand, to ask him not to, but he wasn’t sure he was allowed. As the seconds passed, however, the angel was still not leaving and his fingers were still resting against the demon’s skin. And if he was enjoying the physical contact, Crowley thought, then maybe everything he had suddenly realised he wanted wasn’t madly out of the realm of possibility. But, just as the demon lifted his hand from where it lay at his side, the fire gave a spectacularly loud crack and the pair startled, jumping apart.

The log that the demon had been pushing into the heart of the fire had finally split, falling into two halves. 

Relieved, Crowley gave a tiny exhale of a laugh, turning his face back to the angel, but his friend had already lifted his hand away and was bidding him a quiet goodnight. Caught a little off guard, the demon replied without really thinking about it and the angel wandered off, glancing back twice over his shoulder as he disappeared into the dark shelter of the house. Crowley met his eyes both times, but the idea that he might have followed the angel inside did not occur until much later that night, when the fire had already burned low. He sat by the embers until dawn, considering everything that had been said and all that had not been said, trying to draw conclusions that made even an ounce of sense. He fell asleep amongst the pillows and woke up covered in a blanket. 

.


	5. The park

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for this absolute mammoth. When I was writing out the overall plot I split it into scenes, rather than chapters, so some are significantly heavier than others. Please make sure to have a fortifying snack before starting. C.

So much had happened, in the thousand years between that summer and the present, that it was hard for Crowley to consider himself quite the same being. To start with, the world had changed so rapidly and so entirely that it was almost unrecognisable from the collection of verdant landmass that it had been at the turn of the last millennium. Cities had sprung up everywhere, packed with humans - so many humans. Things happened faster, with more colour and more sound. In the space of thirty years, everything had gone from being distantly connected, to being instantly connected. The demon could travel around the world in less than a day, without even using his powers. He could talk to someone on the other side of the world, just by picking up a phone. He could send messages through the invisible networks that bound the world’s computers together. 

Despite initial reservations about the industrial revolution, Crowley had embraced the twentieth century with both arms. He loved the urgency of the big cities, the streets rammed with humans, and intentions, and potential. He liked cars, and planes, and the widespread availability of food and drink that were no longer utilitarian, but aimed at pleasure. He liked the vibrant dramatics of it all. He liked the fact that larger proportions of the world’s population lived above the poverty line, and that agriculture had reached a point where it could support more people getting enough to eat. It made his job easier. The further away the humans were from imminent extinction, the easier they found it to let go of their gods. It was the perfect environment for a demon at the height of its cynicism and powers.

And, yet, at the turn of the twentieth century - with the end of the world approaching, the humans disenfranchised and the opportunities for Heaven and Hell unlimited - the demon found himself sitting not upon a throne of his vanquished enemies, striking fear and discord into the hearts of nations, but on a park bench in central London, across from a brightly coloured children’s play park, removing the crusts from a peanut butter sandwich so that a small boy would not have to risk the horror of consuming them. 

It was a stupid situation, the demon grumbled to himself, internally. It was a very stupid situation to have gotten himself into. Who in Satan’s name thought that dropping the antichrist onto this world as a child was a good idea anyway? It was just Hell being unimaginative. Heaven had sent up their boy as a baby, so the lazy buggers downstairs had just done the same. Couldn’t have given him scales, or wings, or even funny eyes - making him something that society would have lashed out against, turning him into a truer monster - no, nothing so cleverly thought out. Instead, they picked an ordinary boy, with fairly banal parents, and the most tenuous of connections to power, and just thrust him up there to see what would happen. They were counting rather too much on genetics, thought the demon, who had been around on the earth long enough to know that genetics were about the last thing one wanted to count on. I mean, look at the noses on the royal family. 

If Crowley had been actively wanting armageddon to come about, he would have been spectacularly annoyed by it all. Instead, he had just spent the last five and a half years in an acute state of anxiety, hoping that Hell’s uselessness would be just useless enough to stave off the boiling of the seas, burning skies, and all that nonsense for another few thousand years, so that he could get on with the much more important world-changing tasks that he had set himself. Tasks such as liberating Once Upon a Time in Shaolin from federal custody, trying fugu, inventing wireless headphones, and having a conversation with Aziraphale about their future which didn’t leave him wanting to gouge his own eyes out.

While he was an entirely different being to the demon who had walked the earth a thousand years ago (and different again from the Crawley who had slithered it, many thousand before that), Aziraphale had stubbornly remained Aziraphale despite the winds of time kicking him repeatedly in the face. He was, by far, the most obstinate being that Crowley had ever had the fortune of meeting, and the demon was every bit as in love with him as when he had walked face-first into the emotion, that day in the roman baths. It was different now, of course. You couldn’t love someone for that long and the feeling not change. In the first days, it had been simple - not easy by any means, but simple. Now, it was weighed down with all that had happened between them; the world and all the dangers they had faced, the immeasurable hurts they had caused one another, the shit they brought with them. There had been times, in the last thousand years, where they had been closer than any two humans could hope of being. There had been other times where they had been unwilling to exist on the same continent. The present was a bit of an in-between time. 

Aziraphale had never quite forgiven the demon for asking for the holy water and Crowley had never quite forgiven the angel for not trusting him to know what he was doing, in asking for it. They had moved on, of course - time had given them no choice and they cared too much about one another to remain apart for long - but it was another thing that festered, now, in the silences between their words. Crowley just hoped they would survive long enough to get past the stupid argument properly. It couldn’t end like this, not after everything they had been through. 

The playground across from the bench was full of squalling children, thrashing around, conducting little wars over the best toys. The demon could see his charge throwing sand at a little boy in dungarees and looked quickly away so he wouldn’t be called upon by the other parents to intervene. The boy knew what he was doing. Sand was a perfect weapon, in pursuit of a swing. He pulled the last of the crusts off the sandwich and began to eat them, rather than throw them to the ground and risk attracting pigeons. He was just finishing the last when the angel appeared at his right shoulder. 

“Hello. Why aren’t we meeting at the usual place?” Aziraphale asked, moving to sit down at the other end of the bench, leaving enough room for a third person to sit between them. “What in Heaven’s name are you eating?”

“Sandwich. Peanut butter,” The demon motioned to the neat triangles he had arranged on his left leg. “You want one? He won’t eat all four.” Aziraphale frowned and Crowley motioned over to the play park. The boy was now trying to climb the wrong way up a slide. “I haven’t got him to the point where he can sit and read a newspaper unobtrusively, so I’m afraid we’ll have to pretend not to be enemy agents today.”

Spotting the boy, the angel flustered. 

“Crowley!”

“He’s getting better at the newspaper bit, we’re just not there yet.”

“Dear boy, you can’t bring the-” the angel dropped his voice to a whisper, “-_antichrist_, to our secret meetings!”

“Well, his parents were screaming at one another and they didn’t look like they were going to stop anytime soon, and I had to get going,” the demon whined. “The M40 was a nightmare.” 

Aziraphale fixed him with a stare that was part softness, part irritation. 

“Do they even know he’s with you?” 

“Yes, yes…” he waved a hand. “Well, no… but I did leave a note. It’ll be fine.”

“And what do you propose we say if he recognises me, out of character?” The angel asked, then frowned, and added, “Why aren’t you in character?” He looked the demon up and down. Crowley was in jeans and jacket, a blouse his only concession to the character of Nanny. 

“He doesn’t care how I dress,” the demon rolled his eyes behind their dark frames. “He knows who I am. He’s not an idiot.” 

“But don’t you think it will confuse him?”

“Angel, if a person wearing men’s and women’s clothing confuses him, he’s going to have a lot of trouble coping with this world, never mind the end times. Besides,” the demon added, lifting his chin a little defiantly. “I like the blouse. I think it’s flattering.” 

The very corner of Aziraphale’s mouth twitched and the severe expression melted slightly. Taking a slow breath, Crowley saw the angel calm himself and lean back against the park bench, folding his hands neatly in his lap. As he looked back over towards where six year old Warlock was playing, the demon allowed himself a few seconds to watch his friend, allowed himself a brief respite of feeling, before he directed his mind back to the matter at hand. 

“You needed to talk?” He asked, politely. 

It had been nearly two months since their last update. They saw one another around every few days of course, in disguise, but they had not had a proper debrief in a while. It was important to keep track of how they were balancing the boy. They didn’t want to overdo either side and end up with him joining either Heaven or Hell. 

“Yes.” Aziraphale watched Warlock running through the park, screaming at the top of his lungs. He was wielding a toy sword that he had stolen from another child but paused when he reached the slide, to allow a smaller boy on first. The angel nodded to himself, seemingly satisfied with this compromise of character. “What do I call you, by the way, if he comes over? Am I referring to you as he, she... they?”

The demon eyed him. He found it deeply amusing (and a little bit touching) that the angel still bothered to ask. Nobody else did. Hell called him ‘he’ because that was the kit they had sent him up with. Most humans encountering Crowley tended to assume he was male, unless he was making a particular bodily effort in the opposite direction. Dagon still insisted on called him ‘it’.

“Doesn’t matter,” he grumbled at the angel, looking down and picking at the corner of one of the sandwich triangles. “Whatever you like.”

“But what would _you_ like?”

“It doesn’t matter, angel.”

“But I mean which… are you, right now?” Aziraphale squirmed slightly. 

The demon half turned to look at his friend, incredulously. “How can you possibly still not tell? Every time.” 

The angel gave him an apologetic shrug. 

“I don’t know. I mean, I appreciate that you look different, sometimes, but I’ve known you so long now that I tend to see through any glamour. I just see you as I know you. Which is, I suppose, somewhere in-between.” The angel looked down at his hands. “Unless you’re feeling particularly one way or another - and you’re not, right now. I can tell that much, at least.” He cleared his throat, awkwardly. 

The demon watched him, for a moment, then slung one arm over the back of the bench between them and slouched back into his seat. 

“Well, I’ve always found it a bit dramatic to have to chose, but if you want to then ’he’ is fine. I’m more ‘he’ at the moment. Anatomically speaking, anyway.” 

“Right.” The angel squirmed then, clearly endeavouring to move them off the subject, cleared his throat and continued. “Crowley, I was _up_ the other day.” He always did this little eye sweep, towards the sky, when he said ‘up’, or ‘Heaven’. It irritated the demon immensely. “I was giving a report, but I bumped into Micheal on the way out and she, eh… She said something odd, about one of your lot.”

“Whatever it is, it’s probably true.” Crowley wrinkled his nose. 

“Well, actually, it wasn’t something anyone had done, per se, but something they said.”

“Must have been really vile, to make its way onto Heaven’s radar.” The demon found himself mildly impressed. “Was it Dagon? Can’t be Hastur. Hastur isn’t capable of imagining anything that vile. Would be like expecting witty riposte from a shag carpet.”

He looked over when the angel didn’t reply. Aziraphale’s eyes were tracing the line of his cheek, his brow furrowed anxiously. He looked up when the demon raised his eyebrows. 

“It wasn’t anything terrible, actually. It was about one of Dagon’s nephilim.” 

Crowley blinked. Nephilim had been created in the early years of the world. Half human, half demon, they were an experiment that nobody had expected to work. For a while, they had lived amongst the humans, until Heaven had realised that they possessed the hell-raising ability of their demonic forebears and banished the whole lot of them to the pits. Hell was packed with them, now, all in identical manifested bodies. About ninety percent of them were Dagon’s. The Demon Lord had had a very productive first millennium.

Now, it did not surprise Crowley that Aziraphale’s people had spies inside of Hell - Hell had spies inside of Heaven, after all - but he was surprised Micheal had chosen a nephilim for the job. Consorting with a demon was bad enough. Consorting with a creature that was living evidence of a demon’s unholy work upon the earth seemed a bit much for most angels. Micheal must be more open minded than Hell had given her credit for.

“Well?” He prompted Aziraphale, eventually. The angel seemed to have stalled at the idea of an archangel being on first name terms with one of Dagon’s half-human thralls. “What about it?”

“Oh, yes.” The angel rearranged himself. “Well, Micheal said it was passing through Cambridgeshire, on its way to the university-”

“Yeah, they always send a few up for fresher’s week.”

“-and it felt a disturbance.”

“A what?” 

“Apparently it…” Aziraphale’s brow creased neatly, “_felt_ something nearby. So it went to investigate and the creature in distress turned out to be one of Raphael’s guardian angels. She was stuck in a devils trap, just under a mile away, behind an old mausoleum. Anyway, he went straight away, to tell Micheal about it.”

For a second or two, Crowley repeated the statement inside his head, to be sure he had understood it correctly. One of Dagon’s nephilim had stumbled across one of Raphael’s angels in Cambridgeshire and gone to tell Micheal, whose payroll it was on, to save the angel’s life. But it hadn’t stumbled across the angel, the demon reminded himself, it had sensed her. It had sensed her distress. 

Normally, an angel and a demon could feel one another’s presence only in fairly close proximity, or if they had spent a great deal of time in an area. They could detect traces of good or evil acts on the earth with greater ease - sometimes years later, if an act was truly powerful. The idea of a demonic creature being able to feel an angel across the physical distance of a mile, however, and not because of an act of good or evil but because they were in distress, was a strange phenomenon. Though not entirely exclusive.

“I’ve never heard of any others…” Crowley drifted off, eyes darting to Aziraphale’s. 

The angel was watching him anxiously, clearing sharing the same thought. 

He and Aziraphale, of course, had been able to sense when one another were in danger for a very long time, now. It had begun in Florence but, to understand Florence, it was perhaps necessary to think back another five hundred years, to the summer that the pair of them had spent in that villa on the coast, just north of Rome. 

.

The summer had been nearly at an end. The last weekend of August had passed smoothly away, towards September, though the heat in the air was still oppressive. The angel had been away, returning a wagon-full of borrowed scrolls to the capital city, and the demon had been lounging around the villa, waiting for him to return, spending a lot of time not thinking about the huge amount of feeling he was doing. 

It had been a long time, up until that point, since Crowley had been given cause to re-evaluate how he felt about the angel. They had just sort of grown around one another, rather organically. In Eden, the angel had shown himself as interesting and different for giving away the sword, and then it had trundled along from there. The demon’s interest had turned into vague liking, then vague liking into friendship, and friendship into platonic love. Loving an angel wasn’t very demonic but the demon had never worried too much about what it meant - that his emotions were changing into something more complex, more human. Aziraphale’s familiarity had been a comfort against the ever changing world and, the more they shared, the closer they had continued to grow. They had become comfortable. So comfortable, in fact, that Crowley hadn’t noticed any real shift in the relationship until he was standing firmly on the other side of it, wondering how romantic love could have grown around platonic love without him noticing, and how long he had wanted to touch his friend in that way.

The fact that there was a sexual aspect to it all didn’t bother him, in and of itself. Crowley and Aziraphale had been on Earth a long time, after all. There had been plenty of moments where demon had considered him in that context - especially back in the beginning, when he had been exploring sex for the first time and it was all new and exciting - but it had never really seemed like something their lot did with one another. With humans, yes. There were plenty demons who had been involved with humans, over the years. (Dagon, for starters, but also some whose union had been the product of friendship or fondness, rather than pure hedonism). It got lonely up on Earth and demons were able to form attachments. Crowley knew a number of his colleagues who committed wholeheartedly to the pleasures of a mortal body. He had tried it himself, a couple of times. The physical aspect he enjoyed, but there hadn’t seemed to be anything more in it for him. Certainly, his brief encounters hadn’t made him feel anything like what he was suddenly feeling about his best friend. This new facet of love had grown in him slower and deeper than lust, and hit a lot harder. Part of him wondered whether he hadn’t just been broken by the world and this was what it felt like to go mad. Aziraphale was one of the only good things in his life, after all. To do anything that would jeopardise that was tantamount to lunacy. 

Eventually, after baking himself in the sun at the villa all afternoon, the demon had decided that the only way to process the situation was with ludicrous amounts of alcohol. So, he had sauntered vaguely down to the nearby costal town and taken up residence at one of the seaside inns where they served mixed wine, at various stages of oxidation, in jugs with fruit to mask the vinegary aftertaste. 

The demon had sat there for hours, staring out at the harbour. The drunker he got, the more precarious it all seemed. He knew that Aziraphale loved him - and not just because his friend was an angel and predisposed to love things. Aziraphale cared for him, he valued and respected him. He initiated contact and sought his company. It was love then, yes, but was it even remotely the same sort of love? Could angels shift from feeling love generally, as celestial beings, to feeling complex human types of love, like Crowley suddenly seemed able to? Was it a change that happened naturally, over time? That question irked Crowley, because the pair of them approached time in very different ways. The angel had said it himself the other day, at the bathing pool. He moved steadily through life and Crowley sort of stood still for a while, then jumped forwards in huge increments. This was probably one of these increments, the demon thought, but was it in a direction the angel was likely to follow? Was it a point the angel had already reached?

Brave new possibilities were open to them if they were feeling the same feelings at the same time, the demon mused. It was all very human, but then wine and dinner and collecting old books were also very human. Deep down, Crowley suspected Aziraphale might just be able to return this sort of love, suspected the angel might even be inclined to explore it the same way he did - but he wasn’t sure he was unbiased enough to make that judgement, right now. He couldn't be sure it wasn’t his mortal body trying to trick his supernatural mind. Besides, the demon reasoned, being able to feel love in a certain way didn’t necessarily mean the angel would allow himself to act on it. Aziraphale was loyal to a fault and tied to Heaven. And he, Crowley, was a demon. It was almost worse than if there was no possibility reciprocation, the demon had thought, taking another drink of the awful mixed wine. Imagine if he found some way of showing the angel how he felt, of explaining it all, and then the angel turned around and said ‘Yeah, I feel the same, but no thanks, dear’. 

At this point in the evening, Crowley had given up trying to reason with himself and just sat with his forehead pressed against the table, raising it only to drink. Towards the end of the night, however, as the revellers in the inn grew more rowdy, a distant thought appeared at the back of his demonic brain and he couldn’t shift it (wouldn't be able to shift it for the next thousand years, no matter how hard he tried). The advent of being able to feel different types of love was strange and confusing, but what if they were meant to get to this point? What if this was part of The Plan? Now, Crowley hated The Plan. He hated that there was a Plan and he suspected, very secretly, that it was rather looser than everyone thought it was - but the thought had stuck. What if he and Aziraphale were _meant_ to get to this point?

Getting up from his table, the demon had wobbled his way back up the hill to the villa. Throwing himself into bed, he had fallen asleep more or less immediately and stayed that way until the next afternoon, when his friend returned from Rome. 

He woke to sunlight curling around the west face of the house, peeling its way in through his open window and sliding up the back of his exposed back. The warmth stirred him from a dream about sharks and, turning over, the demon could hear the angel talking to one of the humans who kept the gardens, at the other end of the house. He had yawned and stretched a bit, listening to Aziraphale’s voice as he searched his mind for any conclusions he had come to, the previous night. The only one which lingered was that thought - that thought about the plan. So, bracing himself for the horror of acting before he had fully thought it all through, the demon had dressed and wandered towards the courtyard.

The angel was drinking tea at a small table when the demon arrived outside, feeling a little tender despite the miraculous absence of a proper hangover. Nodding towards the table, to indicate that Crowley should sit, Aziraphale had pulled a second cup from nothing and poured some of the steaming liquid from his cup into it. 

“Late night was it?” There was amusement twinkling in the blue and hazel of his eyes. 

The demon slung himself into his seat and accepted the tea as it was offered. 

“Your humans have been mixing wines,” he accused. “Makes it hard to get them all out. They all leave the body at different rates, see. You always end up missing a little.” 

“Why I never drink at The Lantern,” Aziraphale replied, a little self righteously, then added, “I do hope you didn’t cause any trouble down there.”

The demon pulled on his most offended expression. “Trouble? I don’t think I could have contributed if I tried, angel.”

Aziraphale raised an eyebrow. 

“No, really,” Crowley insisted. “They had it covered. Bar fights, cheating at dice, women, copious amounts of rum…”

The angel gave a small grimace. “It’s a local fisherman’s hideout. Things can get pretty lively.”

“Lively? There was a man dancing on a table in nothing but his hat by the end of the evening. Lively doesn’t cover it.” As his friend’s grimace twitched towards a smile, Crowley felt the urge to be little coy. “…all right up my alley, of course.” His heart beat faster as he took a nonchalant sip of tea. 

Aziraphale smiled widened.

“I imagine it was...” 

The demon’s stomach squirmed. His eyes, which had been sweeping the courtyard with practised disinterest, were suddenly hovering rather decidedly on his friend's eyes. Then, they were hovering for too long. Then they were hovering for entirely too long and that warm feeling of need was pooling inside of him again. Swallowing, Crowley looked quickly back down at his hands, picking at a loose splinter on the surface of the table. 

“How was Rome?” He asked, hoping it came across a lot cooler and more suave than he felt. 

“Oh, the usual. Hot. Busy. Full of romans.”

“Catch any good oysters?”

“No,” the demon could hear the smile in his voice. “Not this time.” 

There was a little lull in the conversation, then. Crowley's skull felt like a cavernous room where once there had been useful things, like thoughts and words. He desperately wanted to say something, to go back to the easy way they had conversed for centuries, but suddenly he didn’t have anything to offer. Small talk had vanished. The ability to ramble on about nothing was gone. The only thing that seemed to be there was that thought - well, more of a feeling, really - that he couldn’t seem to shift. What if they were meant to get to this point? What if they were meant to feel like this? Maybe he should just act and see. 

“I, um,” he started speaking before he was really ready to, and ended up stumbling over the words. “Listen, there’s something I was wanting to ask - that is, if you don’t mind talking about it. Not that I expect you would, but if you did…” he coughed. “I suppose what I mean to say is-,” 

He intended to go on, but Aziraphale interrupted him gently. 

“I need to talk to you, also.”

The angel sounded a little sad, and it knocked the nervous excitement right out of the demon. He looked up and found sadness in Aziraphale’s eyes as well.

“Oh, right. Well, you go first then,” he mumbled, suddenly feeling very worried. “Is something wrong?”

“Not exactly.” The angel sighed and gave an apologetic little tilt of his head. “Gabriel made an appearance.”

He had gone on to tell Crowley that the archangel had found him in Rome to relay a summons from on high. Aziraphale’s year of personal leave was to be cancelled and the angel recalled to Heaven, for a time. Management had decided that, following their success in the establishment of a few large churches, they should really spend some time thinking about what they wanted to do with them all. They needed to update their resources on current human behaviours, cultures, the political situation across Europe and the East, and the status of the arts in particular. As organised religion came under the subject of the arts and Aziraphale was the principality of humans of that field, he would be required throughout the process and to write up recommendations afterwards.

“I might be some time,” he finished, lamely. 

Crowley had stared blankly. 

“Oh.” His brain was still a cavernous room. There were no words. Even the warm tension of anticipation had suddenly vanished. “H-how much time?” He asked, flatly.

“I don’t know.”

“The rest of the summer…?”

“I don’t know, dear.”

There was a distant kind of ringing in his ears but, apart from that, nothing was happening inside his head. Crowley cleared his throat. 

“Well.” 

“Its not really a choice, Crowley.”

“I know.”

“They’re not exactly asking.”

“I know.”

“I can’t go around ignoring summons from Heaven. I’m an angel.”

“I know that!” The words came out fast and harsh. Crowley felt himself flush. He hadn’t really meant to snap, he really hadn't. It was just that, suddenly, the cavernous room that was his mind felt huge and frightening. Suddenly, he felt stupid, and slow, and hurt. He wanted to lash out and words were rising to his aid, pouring out of him like poison. “It’s fine,” he hissed. “It’s not much of a change of plan, anyway. I was only down for the summer. Next week is the beginning of September. You’ll just get rid of me a little sooner than you thought.”

“Crowley-,”

“-It’s fine. It’s not a choice, is it? They call, we come. They say jump, we ask how high.” 

The angel stared at him. 

A couple of heartbeats passed in total silence. Even the soft noises of the nearby trees seemed to have dulled. Crowley wasn’t sure why he was so angry - or if this even was anger. A very human surge of adrenaline was coursing through his body. He felt the tips of his fingers shaking. Leaning into his power, he stopped it, flattening the hormone release, feeling his heart rate begin regulate - but the hurt and the anger continued to rise. His fingers stopped shaking, but there was still a ringing in his ears. 

“You could stay, if you liked,” Aziraphale said quietly, after half a minute had passed. “Look after the place for me?”

“Nah, you’ve got humans for that, haven’t you?” The angel’s hand twitched, as if he were going to reach out but the demon withdrew his own hands from the table and leant back in his chair, folding his arms tightly across his chest. “When do you leave?” He asked, coolly.

“Well, I’m supposed to be there, now,” Aziraphale admitted, “but I told them I had to attend to a few things first. I just…” the angel’s eyes slipped slightly off his, “wanted to tell you in person.”

“How kind.”

The briefest flutter of irritation passed over the angel’s face. He looked quickly back up.

“Crowley-,”

“-I mean, I might have figured it out, eventually, when you didn’t come back.” The demon tilted his head in mock thought. “It would have taken a while, though - tiny, reptilian brain and all.” He wasn’t sure why he was saying this. He wanted to bite his own lip, to stem the flow of the words, but he also wanted to shout and kick the table over. He didn’t know why he was reminding Aziraphale of how different they were, but he couldn't stop. “Suppose I’ll just slither off back to Spain, then. Not got much going on up there, but I’m sure I’ll find something to occupy myself. Kicking puppies, or something.” 

The angel’s mouth was set in a thin line. 

“Maybe we could-,” he began but the demon leant forwards and he stopped, flinching slightly. 

That pissed Crowley off more than all the rest, mainly because it made him feel guilty.

“I’ll see you around, Aziraphale,” he snapped, then he pushed his chair back so hard that it fell over and stalked off through the villa. 

He didn’t take anything from the house as he left. There were not that many things he would have taken, to be fair. Perhaps the book he had been reading, or the silver chain Aziraphale had gifted him, a couple of nights before. Desperate emotion had consumed him, however, and he stalked all the way back through the grounds and down the road to the town below before even remembering that he didn’t have any shoes. Snarling at himself, consumed with rage and ever increasing surges of guilt, he walked barefoot all the way to the coast before he had the concentration to summon his powers and miracle a pair of very uncomfortable sandals. Then he walked in them all the way back to Spain. 

. 

Florence came five hundred years later. Five hundred very long years. Crowley had lurked around Europe and the near east for most of them, conducting Hell’s business and growing increasingly despondent. Most of the first two centuries, he had spent asleep, curled in his monstrous snakeform in a cave, high in the Pyrenees. When eventually he had woken, he had crawled weakly into the world and caused a series of landslides, decimating a local village’s grape crop but miraculously sparing their homes and livestock. 

He had lurked over to India for a while, after that, and involved himself in the taking of Bengal, as a foot soldier. He had lurked through China, on his way north, learning the trade routes of the Mongol empire and causing a rash of horse theft along the silk road. He returned to the north, to the same island where he had suffered through the dampness of the Kingdom of Wessex, to stir a handful of barons and their peasants to rise up against a king. He had taken part in half a dozen different crusades, on behalf of half a dozen different lords, in the name of half a dozen different gods, none of which could be deemed in any way useful to the development of humanity. That, in itself, satisfied Hell for a bit and the demon took a year off to recuperate along the Red Sea. 

It was only there that the painful feelings of abandonment, which had been raging inside him for so long, finally began to ease a little. He spent a lot of time swimming, among the coloured fish and the jewel bright waters; a lot of time wandering up and down along the endless shores of sand. He spent a lot of time thinking. Slowly, he made his way up around the peninsulas back into the lands where he had been in the very beginning, the land where the garden had been, and he began to retrace old paths. He went back to the valley, where he had once lived among the humans for fifty years, and tasted the memory of his grief there. He went back to the mountains where the ark had been, and remembered the children he had saved. He searched for any hint of the garden, or the angel, but he found neither. He had not seen sign of the angel on Earth for nearly five hundred years, by this point, and he was quite convinced that he would go to the end of time without seeing him again, without getting to apologise, or being able to hug him and say goodbye. He was not sure whether Heaven had pulled Aziraphale, because they had found out about the pair of them, or whether the angel had chosen not to return because of how he had acted. Either way, his friend was gone, and it took a very long time and a lot of pain for Crowley to accept that. 

After the siege and capture of Acre, the demon returned to Europe, tired of the horror of the crusades, and of bumping into his people there. He busied himself among the landed gentry of the feudalist states, mainly messing with tax law again - a task for which he had abundant natural talent. He wheedled many a rich house out of rents and occasionally tinkered in commoner’s uprisings, which bothered the church and pleased Hell. More and more, however, he went to perform some petty mischief and found that the humans had not only got there before him, but twisted the idea into something so horribly macabre that Crowley could not possibly have imagined it. The demon’s reports to his supervisors slowly slipped from being about sixty percent true to being about ten percent true. Nobody noticed, or cared. 

Then came the fourteen century. The middle ages had been rife, in general, with political and natural disasters, but never had they had such fearful, unrelenting consistency as the fourteenth century. The black death swept Europe and the near east, claiming millions upon millions of lives. The King of England continued to claimed the throne of France and threw even more lives towards making that a reality. Scotland was at war with England, shedding blood in the north. Spain and Portugal began to subject anyone who didn’t agree with their particular brand of religion to violent public attacks. Bodies on bodies bodies were piled into mass graves. Orphans grew up to father orphans, who grew up to father orphans. Even the weather grew colder, one of the Earth’s brief warm periods coming to an end, leaving winters thick with snow and summers that ended long before autumn. As if to top it all off, as the demon was passing through Florence, near the end of one such short summer, he became embroiled in a peasants revolt. 

It was something to do with wool, or a guild, or union fees - Crowley had not been paying much attention, having thoroughly given up on the fourteenth century by this point. The long and short of it seemed to be that people were angry and they were expressing that anger with pointed weaponry aimed at the ruling classes (who, to be fair, were generally responsible for most cases of repression). Around mid-july, the thing came to a head. Crowley, thinking he might as well get caught in the middle of it in order to report it back to headquarters as his demonic work, had been hanging around in an inn with three other men who seemed more interested in playing dice than in taking any active part in local politics. Unluckily, the three had also turned out to be avid followers of a particularly zealous branch of the catholic church and, upon finding out about Crowley’s eyes - whose appearance he had let slip as his concentration became more focussed on the dice - had decided that they could no longer suffer their demonic drinking partner to live. 

They had left the pub before Crowley, around midnight, and had laid in wait in the alley outside, a devil’s trap drawn loosely in the dirt. If they had had the time to etch it deeper, or paint it in blood, the demon would have been done for. As it was, it was a dark night and, in their attempts to drive a sword through his heart, one of the young men had disturbed the careful markings. Crowley had managed to throw off the blessed crucifix and chain by splintering one of his attacker’s arms. He had thrown another against a wall, where he had been knocked out. The third had run and the demon had taken the opportunity to drag himself off in the other direction, bleeding copiously and gravely wounded. 

He had dragged himself right over to the other side of the town, not wanting to give the men a chance to come back and finish him off, and managed to sneak into a room in a quiet boarding house, well away from the chaos of the rebellion. There, he used his remaining powers to seal the doors against intruders, curled up in the bed, and concentrated every last fibre of his being on not discorporating. It had been agonising - pain like he had not felt in years. Unable to hold the mental barriers he usually held in place, the demon could feel everything; the physical pain, the twisting of his immortal soul, every memory, and hurt he had experienced in his long life. To have it all, so suddenly, was agonising. His body was too weak to scream, so the screams happened inside him, instead. Clinging to existence with all that he had, Crowley had screamed, and screamed, and screamed. 

Then, in the darkest hours of the morning, the angel had come. He arrived with a hurried knock on the door that the demon had been in no fit state to answer. Lost in pain, hovering in some state in between existence and what lay beyond, he had barely been able to register his friend’s arrival. Undeterred, Aziraphale had pushed his way inside, tearing through the protective enchantments around the room with a power that Crowley would later marvel at. They were the strongest wards he could have set, and Aziraphale banished them in less than three minutes. 

Once inside, the angel he had come and knelt beside the bed. Crowley could not remember this part precisely. He could just remember knowing that, suddenly, he was not alone. He could remember the relief of cool fingertips pressing against his feverish skin. He could smell the warm scent of his friend, hear the angel whispering soft magic, and then he could feel him too. He was everywhere, his power surrounding Crowley until the demon was drowning in it, breathing him in. It was raw, and terrible, and exposing, and that was what Crowley woke to, in the darkness of that tuscan room. The angel’s hands were on the bloodied mess of his ribs, holding closed the gaping wound in his side. The angel’s power was pressed up against his; all the love and wonder and pain of him so near. Accepting that it was either going to fix him or break him completely, the demon let down the last of his protective barriers. He stopped trying to exist and started trying to heal, trusting his friend to shoulder the burden of keeping him alive. And Aziraphale had shouldered it. He had taken all the pain and carried them both through that night, until the demon’s bones began to mesh together again and flesh crept back over the hole in his chest, until his blood replenished and his heart began to slow from its state of thundering panic. 

Eventually, after passing in and out of reality for several hours, the demon felt himself return to a state of awareness, in his own body, and the pain faded enough for him to speak. The first thing he asked was how the angel had found him, to which Aziraphale had just frowned. He didn’t know, he admitted, as he wiped blood tenderly from the demon’s skin with a warm cloth. He had just felt him calling out for help. He had known Crowley needed him, so he had come. It was beyond all completely explanation and entirely simple. 

The demon had been too tired to ask anything else. At some point, he remembered that he had spent the last five hundred years wishing he could apologise for how they parted, but basking in one another’s power made it feel somehow superfluous. Aziraphale knew. So, the demon just whispered ‘thank you’ and pressed his face against his friend’s arm, and the pair of them had fallen into an exhausted sleep, tangled loosely in one another. He could feel the angel’s forgiveness washing through him as he closed his eyes. Aziraphale had offered it long before Crowley had even thought to ask. 

.

In the park, in the present, the demon and the angel eyed one another, warily. They had never really talked about Florence. It had been an incredibly intimate experience and it came at a point in their lives where they had spent a very long time apart. The morning after, they had been distracted by the practicalities of getting out of the city in the middle of a riot, having both used as much celestial power as their earthly bodies could handle, without a rest. They had shared the only meal they had ever eaten together for sustenance alone - half a loaf of bread and some stale cheese, to give their bodies the strength to limp to the city gates - then they had bought passage out of Florence on the back of a grain merchant’s coach. 

Though Crowley had been too exhausted to be embarrassed, at the time, he found it all mortifying in retrospect. He had been utterly helpless and entirely at the angel’s mercy. To have it be the first time they had come face to face, after the villa, made it worse. Still, it had eliminated the need for several awkward conversations, the demon supposed, (even if it had provided ample fodder for others). At least Aziraphale had been able to feel how sorry he had been, about how they had left things in Civitavecchia. At least he had known why Crowley had reacted the way he did. There was something comforting about his feelings being out in the open - even if neither of them spoke about it afterwards. At least Aziraphale knew where he stood. The demon would never have been able to put all of that adequately into words.

To current date, they had still never properly talked about it. They had felt when one another were in trouble a handful more times, however. Crowley had been tugged into wakefulness one afternoon, in 1539 to find the angel at the end of a sword, while trying to prevent the sacking of a monastery in Norfolk. Aziraphale had come to liberate him from a stockade, in 1601, where he had been sentenced to death for impersonating a priest. Both times, neither could explain with any level of certainty how they knew that the other needed them. They had just known, so they went. 

In the wake of the strange connection they had forged, the two began to drift back together again. Crowley slowly made his way back to London, where the angel was stationed, on pretence of having work up that way and the two began to see one another every few months. It was all very cautious. They fell into the old patterns of the Arrangement and gentle banter quickly enough, but Crowley noticed that the angel was more careful with him than he had been in Florence, and far more careful than he had been before that summer in Italy.  The demon did not blame Aziraphale. He even encouraged the distance, at first. His strange, human feelings didn't change anything between them, after all. They were still not allowed to be friends - let alone anything more. It had been incredibly naive of him to have assumed otherwise. Indeed, the lack of gravity he had assigned to his actions, back in the villa, was staggering when considered in retrospect. His friendship with Aziraphale had been four thousand years in the making. To have been about to shift the axis of that relationship overnight had been juvenile and rash. To bite the angel's head off when it had gone wrong, even more so. He had just been so overwhelmed, at the time. It had all been so new. 

As time went on, the demon got better at compartmentalising it all, inside his mind. He cultivated a professional veneer for their interactions. He became practiced at holding a distance, spreading the closeness out in tiny moments, to make it bearable. But the feelings he had half suppressed, for five hundred years, refused to disappear. S lowly, the distance between them began to crumble away, softened by the familiarity of their stupid jokes and the conversations that they sometimes repeated, and the way the angel started calling him ‘dear’ again. And then, one morning in the eighteenth century, Crowley woke after a three week nap and decided - calmly and with complete clarity - that he was done pretending. He was just done. Couldn’t do it anymore. If he could feel the angel panicking in the Bastille, three hundred miles away, and spent a month dwelling on how Aziraphale had squeezed his shoulder as they parted, there was no point in lying anymore. He was in this. Hell could do what they wanted with him, Aziraphale could figure out how he felt along the way, but Crowley was done. He loved this world and he loved the angel. He wasn’t fucking around anymore, pretending to be something he wasn’t. The universe was huge and full of wonder. Surely, it held an answer for them somewhere.

So, the demon set out to find it. He poked around Hell to find out how they were tracked, and how often they were checked up on, and who did what. He spent a disturbing few days learning about past demonic acts of treason, (all much smaller acts than the one he was considering, all cruelly punished). He figured out who owed him favours and who would accept a bit of grovelling, in return for discretion. That was the good thing about Hell, after all. Deals could be brokered. Loyalties were flexible. Self-interest reigned supreme. There was always someone willing to trade favours and Crowley was willing to submit an awful lot for this. Back on Earth, h e strengthened the protections around his safehouses. He set up warning systems, to give him a head start if someone came looking for him. He planned until there was nothing more that he could do. 

Looking over it all, Crowley knew it was an insufficient safety net, but it was the best he could do on his own.  The protections he wound around his life would have been twenty times as strong if Aziraphale had been willing to contribute to them. The power of Heaven and Hell stemmed from different sources, after all. Demons struggled to break the protective wards of an angel, and vice versa. A barrier set up by an angel and a demon would keep most of their enemies at bay. Unfortunately, it would also be like carving their names side by side, into the bark of a tree. Nobody seeing such a protection would be in any doubt what they meant to one another. It was an unacceptable risk. So, Crowley’s protections would have to do.

Practicalities taken care of, the demon had turned his attention to the more delicate part of the situation. Aziraphale had been growing far more comfortable in his company again, but he was still very cautious. The demon knew better than the launch into anything too big, this time. He floated a few hints, to start off with. He stopped forcing distance between them. He let the little moments of closeness between them happen more frequently. A few times, when the angel was relaxed, he tried to broach the subject - but Aziraphale always spotted it coming and averted the conversation.  So, Crowley settled on showing the angel how he felt, instead. Acts of love seemed to be easier for Aziraphale to accept than words and Crowley was willing to wait. They would talk about it when they were ready, he reasoned. It wasn't as if they were short on time. So, he brought the angel gifts, every time he came back from his travels, and told him stories of the wonders he had seen. He took him to dinner, and let him wax on about literature, and always turned up when his friend needed him. He let Aziraphale stand still as he stepped cautiously closer - taking it slowly, taking his time - safe in the knowledge that the world was due to be around for a while. 

But not any more, the demon thought, staring out across St. James’s park. Time was running out and they were only just getting over some stupid spat about holy water that he definitely shouldn’t have asked for and Aziraphale definitely should have trusted him with. Time had spent the last sixty centuries stretching out, like a rubber band, and now it was pinging back towards them. It seemed only yesterday that he had rescued Aziraphale from that church and the angel had gazed at him in open adoration, for the first time in nearly a thousand years. It seemed only this morning that he had been standing in a dark graveyard, being handed a basket full of endings, but it wasn’t. Time was racing towards the end and here they were, sitting in the park as if it wasn’t, but it was. It really was. 

The end was coming. Armageddon was on the horizon, and there were other demons being able to feel other angels. And Crowley, himself, was starting to have these strange dreams about the beginning of the world - most likely a psychological reaction to its imminent ending. He was even was half convinced that his powers were growing stronger. Everything seemed to be changing, tensing, readying itself. 

Crowley closed his eyes, glad of the dark lenses of his new glasses. 

Beside him, Aziraphale sighed. 

“I don’t know what to make of it either,” the angel admitted, “but it’s strange, isn’t it? I didn’t really even think that our lot talked. Let alone being able to feel one another…”

Crowley opened his eyes, looking over. 

A nephilim feeling an angel in distress, up in the woods of Cambridgeshire - that was what they were discussing. He had been drifting off, lost in the past again. Gathering himself, he gave Aziraphale a careful look and replied.

“I thought it was just us.”

“Yes. Me too.”

A few heartbeats passed, and the demon felt he should mention something - just in case the angel was worrying that he was worrying about it - or perhaps because he was worrying that the angel was worrying about it. 

“I do think we’re different,” he mentioned, as casually as he could manage. 

“Well,” Aziraphale shifted a tiny bit in his seat. “Yes. I mean, the distances we've managed have been quite extraordinary, for a start.” He paused, taking a moment to consider his words. “How far was the Bastille from where you were, during the revolution?” 

“Two hundred and ninety something miles.” Crowley had checked on a map, afterwards. “The stockade, in Eisleben?” 

“Well, I was in Edinburgh at the time, so that would make it…”

They both frowned. 

“Has to be north of seven hundred,” the demon eventually calculated. 

The angel gave a soft noise of assent. 

They were both quiet for a moment. 

“Florence?” Crowley eventually forced out, his voice just a tiny bit higher than usual. 

Aziraphale cleared his throat, and replied, in an equally not-quite-his-own voice; “wasn’t on Earth, that time, actually.”

The demon’s head whipped around.

“You what?”

“Wasn’t down.”

“You weren’t-?”

“No, I-,” the angel looked down at his hands, pressing his thumbs together in his lap. “If you must know, I was finishing those blasted reports on organised religion, up in archives, but nobody was really keeping tabs and I felt you in pain, and I couldn’t just stay. So, I sort of… snuck out.”

“Snuck out?” The demon exclaimed. 

“Yes. Through a window, actually.”

“Well, shit.”

The pair of them stared directly ahead of themselves for a few minutes, processing. That was probably the most startling revelation of the morning - including the fact that others of their type could sense one another for purposes other than good and evil. The world was a more mysterious place than they had imagined, in all their long years. 

“So,” Crowley said, after enough time had passed that he really should say something. “What do we even do with this information?”

“No idea.” The angel sighed again. “I just wanted to tell you. I mean, I thought I ought to tell you, considering everything.” 

He went quiet again. Crowley gave himself a moment to enjoy the fact that the angel had wanted to tell him. He took his little victories where he could, these days. He was just about to lighten the mood by asking whether Micheal knew about any other angels who were up for ‘feeling' demons, up in the woods around Cambridgeshire, because that’s the sort of information he _could_ use, when a shout alerted him to a small boy’s incoming presence.

The six year old bounded up with the momentum of a harrier jump jet and attempted to leap into his arms. Only a swiftly timed grab prevented the demon from receiving a knee to the crotch. 

“Oi!” 

“I’m hungry!” The child demanded, imperiously. 

“Yes, yes, okay…”

The demon lifted him, all boy limbs and thrashing enthusiasm, and placed him on the ground at a reasonable distance. The sandwich, which had still been sitting on his knee, was a little squashed but had mostly survived the impact. Wrestling the child into a state to accept them, the demon offered the child two of the triangles, and sat, holding a third, watching him chew. Food seemed to calm the unholy creature and after a few swallows it settled to draping itself over Crowley’s knee, watching Aziraphale with shameless interest. 

“Hello,” the angel offered, smiling down at him cautiously. 

“You look different,” the boy accused. 

“Told you he’d know,” Crowley said, sliding one of his feet further away to stop the boy treading on it. 

The angel shot him a frown, mouth opening. 

“It’s fine,” the demon interrupted, heading off what he was sure would have been a well thought out rant about how Crowley was endangering the plan, armageddon, and everything else. He reached out, briefly covering the child’s ears with his hands. “I’ll make him forget he’s even seen you later. Magic, angel.”

The boy squirmed out from under his hands. 

“Are you two talking about sex?” He frowned at Crowley. “That’s what my mom does when she and dad are talking about sex.”

“Sadly, we are not,” the demon patted him firmly on the head. 

“Crowley!” The angel muttered, in that affected little way he did when he wasn’t really scandalised by something but felt he should be. 

“Oh, he’s fine…” The boy eventually finished his sandwich quarters and refused a third, which the demon popped into his own mouth and made a great show of swallowing whole, amusing the child to no end. “Okay,” he produced a wipe from where it had magically appeared in his pocket and cleaned the worst of the peanut butter from the boy’s hands. “Why don’t you go back and play with the lesser vertebrates? Hm?” He motioned to the other children. 

The boy frowned. Then, without outright refusing his nanny’s demands, because he knew that would not work, he began to clamber up the bench onto him. 

“Oh, for Satan’s…” Crowley muttered. 

The boy was all limbs and belly - soft and bony in a way that only children are. For a moment, the demon considered pushing him off, considered using the very edge of his powers to compel him to run back into the play park, but then the child’s small hands had latched around the back of his neck and he was burying his face in the demon’s shoulder, squirming around until he was comfortably nestled, and Crowley found he just didn’t have the heart. Demon of inconvenience, talk shows, bad traffic, and that way vending machines jammed right after they had taken your money, he might be… but he had always had a bit of a soft spot for kids. Ever since the beginning. 

Glancing sideways, he saw Aziraphale wearing that supercilious expression he liked to wear when Crowley was caught doing something patently un-demonic. 

“Oh, shut up,” the demon grumbled.

“Never said a word, dear boy,” the angel replied, sounding far too pleased with himself. 

They sat for a while on the bench, with the child falling asleep on top of Crowley, the patter of his heartbeat so much faster than that of the body the demon inhabited. He always had always found it very comforting to be needed, thought Crowley, but this time it was so complicated; trying to influence the child without getting too close, without getting too attached. At the back of his mind, the demon was aware that, if their plan all went wrong, the boy was an enormous risk. If they reached the end of the line and the world was at stake, their last option was to end his life. The thought made him tighten the arm he had looped around the child’s back, pressing their ribs together. 

He was so small and warm and human, thought the demon. It didn’t feel possible that he was capable of the evil that he was supposed to be capable of. But then that was the point, wasn’t it? Half celestial, half human - the most potent form of evil. Or, perhaps, it had been when Hell thought it up. But would it stand up, in this day and age? Even the most evil of his acts did not come close to what humans did to one another on a regular basis. 

It was all just such a mess. The humans were boiling the seas and scorching the skies in the name of no god at all, while Hell and Heaven were busy with paperwork. A nephilim had just sensed a guardian angel in distress and gone to his angel spymaster, to save her. And an angel and a demon were sitting inches apart on a park bench, holding the antichrist - the angel blushing and the demon feeling a pang of longing as a young mother passed by, mistook the three of them for a little family and beamed widely at them. It was all colossally fucked up.

Crowley turned his head sideways slightly, to look at Aziraphale over the top of the child’s head.

“Can I take you to dinner, tomorrow?” 

The angel blinked, caught off guard, then he glanced down at the child and back up again. His expression was soft - even if it was also a bit reproachful that Crowley had chosen this moment, with the child between them, to ask. All was fair in love and war, thought the demon. He waited for an answer, hardly daring to breathe. 

“Okay,” the angel said, eventually. His tone was cautious and his eyes even more so. “Where to?”

“Anywhere you want to go, angel.” Their eyes held for a long moment. It was a gentle flirt. Crowley definitely wouldn’t have dared if they were alone, but the warmth of the child in his arms gave him courage, even if it was only temporary. “Pick you up at seven?” He asked, just about managing to keep his tone casual. 

The angel nodded, with a hint of a smile. “Seven sounds fine.” 

“Cool.”

It wasn’t quite talking about it, not yet, but it was far closer as an action than they’d been in years. It was explicitly social and phrased slightly like a date. Crowley was willing to chalk it up as a win. 

They sat for a bit longer, then the angel noticed the time and had to dash off to an appointment at the bookshop. The pair left their separate ways. The demon had decided not to move the boy from his arms until he woke by himself. He was rarely this quiet while awake, after all, and he wasn’t really that heavy. The afternoon was warm and sunny, so he walked the long way back to the car through the park to the car, the antichrist snoozing gently on his shoulder.


	6. Mayfair

The world did not end in fire and brimstone, as it turned out. The seas did not boil and blood did not rain from the skies. The antichrist, it transpired (to Crowley’s never ending relief), was not actually the antichrist - and the antichrist who was the antichrist decided not to be so either. It proved to be a hell of a week, but not in any of the ways the angel and the demon could have predicted, in the eleven years leading up to the event. Sitting on the bus home, afterwards, the demon thought Aziraphale had put the whole thing perfectly when he said he felt as if they had fallen out of peril and into limbo.

The journey back from Tadfield took an entirely un-miraculous two hours, because Crowley was absolutely exhausted. He could only just about concentrate on making the driver and all the other passengers keep wanting to go to London rather than Oxford. As the pair of them stepped off, into the night, he let go of even that and their noises of confusion echoed around the dark road as the angel and the demon wandered slowly back towards the demon’s mayfair flat.

What was going to happen to them, was the question that kept revolving slowly around Crowley’s exhausted brain. The world had not ended and everyone was very angry about that - apart from the antichrist, and the few humans who knew about it all, and he and Aziraphale, of course. It was a strange sensation, to have such overwhelming relief flowing through him alongside overwhelming uncertainty. He was bone tired, drained from the use of his powers. Pausing time had been the most potent display of celestial magic he had managed in all his time on Earth. He still didn’t know how he had managed to access or control it, but he could only assume it was because of the desperation that had been pouring through him at the time, or the presence of the antichrist child, or because it was Aziraphale who had asked - or, perhaps, some combination of all three.

He had thought, a few years back, now, that his powers might have been growing as they reached the end times. That suspicion had turned out to be correct. Even now, in their depleted state, they felt more expansive than they had in all of Crowley’s six thousand years. His mortal body quickly became too exhausted to use them but he could feel their distant presence, stretching out into the world, further than Earth, further than Hell. It was a strange sensation. There was new and incredible potential that he had never felt before - or perhaps that he had felt, but only a very long time ago. Strange thoughts tickled the back of his brain, strange half-formed realisations and memories. Who he used to be.

Over the past few years, as the end of the world had approached, the demon had begun to remember things - little things at first, things he half thought were made up, like the dreams he had been having about the beginning of time. One day, around the antichrist’s ninth birthday, he had woken from a nap with the distant knowledge that he had helped make stars, from the dust of space, back in a time before there was a Heaven, or a Hell. He could suddenly remember the sensation of creation running through him, a perfect mirror of what it felt like to create on Earth. As time went on, he began to remember other things, too, vague recollections of how he had fallen - that he had just sort of followed his brothers. That it hadn’t been a choice, really. Then he had begun to wonder if any of them had made a choice, or if God had written it for them, long before they had even come into existence.

It was all coming back, but slowly, and not entirely in the right order, and standing in the aftermath of the failed Armageddon was the wrong time to be analysing it. The demon had no mind power left. He didn’t even have the keys to his flat, he realised, as he and the angel arrived at the front door. His mortal body was too exhausted to reach out to magic again. He was tapped out. So, he just stood for a moment, staring into space, until the angel reached out and gently touched him on the arm.

“Would you like a hand?”

The demon looked over at his friend, half lit by the street lamps above, and sharp waves of relief burst through him. The angel was here, not dissolved into nothing, or burned in a bookshop, or captive in the hands of Hell. He was here, safe, at least for now.

“Yeah,” he nodded his head. It was sweet catharsis to ask for help. “Please.”

“Okay, what do I do?”

“Just sort of ask it to open and push,” he made the motion with his hand. “It’ll know you. I made it that way.” Each of his words cost an extraordinary effort. They were worth it, though. Aziraphale looked extremely touched to hear that the demon had worked him into his personal protections, and dipped his eyes a little as he reached forwards to lay a hand on the centre of the door.

He made the motion and it clicked, softly, swinging open.

The angel had never been inside this home, Crowley thought, as he stepped forwards over the threshold, nodding for his friend to follow. He had been to some of the demon’s other residences, over the years, but since Florence they had only met at Aziraphale’s, or on neutral ground. It had seemed fairer that way, with the angel’s newfound caution. To lead him inside, now, felt inherently intimate, even more intimate than the soft grasp they had maintained on one another’s hands on the long bus ride home. This was new territory for them - to add to the abundant new territory that they had opened themselves up to, in helping to prevent the end of the world.

“So, this is where you live?” The angel stepped carefully into the hall, taking a moment to press his hand again the door before closing it behind them. Crowley felt the distant force of the protective wards sealing themselves, binding tighter than before because of the addition of another being’s power. Demons on Earth sometimes lived in covens, for protection. This house was now a thousand times safer than any of those - sealed by the power of both Heaven and Hell. Several of the knots inside Crowley’s belly loosened slightly. He let out a long, heavy breath. They were safe, for now. Aziraphale would help protect them. They were safe.

The demon looked around, at the long windows and the plants, caught in the moonlight. It looked just as it had when he had raced from here, yesterday afternoon. He knew he should probably turn on the lights, to be polite, but he didn’t want to. There was something safe about the darkness. It hid the exhaustion and worry on his face. Pulling his glasses off, he dropped them on a table near the door and stalked deeper into the flat, passing plants which held their metaphorical breath until he was safely out of sight. Through in his rarely-used kitchen, the demon selected a glass from the minimally stocked shelf and poured himself some water from the tap. He drank it, finding comfort in the movement. He was desperately craving a sense of normality.

Behind him, the angel made his way cautiously into the room, footsteps almost soundless on the tiles.

“It’s nice,” he said, softly, to Crowley and the darkness.

The demon made a noncommittal grunt. He liked the quiet, empty space. It was the antithesis of how the inside of his brain had felt these last dozen years. It was a sanctuary and a fortress. Though, even inside it, he had never felt safe.

“It serves a purpose,” he granted the angel, turning to lean back against the kitchen counter. His legs were done. Every muscle in his body ached. It was as if the proximity of such powerful magic had drained them of all their energy. He wanted desperately to sleep. He needed desperately to stay awake, to figure out what they were going to do next. “Can I get you anything?”

“Do you have anything stronger than water?”

A ghost of a smile crossed his face. He nodded towards the cabinet to the angel’s right.

“Naturally.”

They poured themselves a glass each of whisky, then the demon poured a second, because the first had brought forth memories of the last time he had been drinking whisky, sitting in a bar in Soho, thinking the world was ending and he’d have to live through eternity without seeing the angel or Earth again, out of his mind with grief. Sitting across from one another at the long, dark table in the middle of Crowley’s large, square kitchen, the demon finally worked up the courage to voice what had been bouncing around in his head for the last few hours - ever since the adrenaline had worn off and the realisation that imminent destruction of the planet had been put off for a while.

“So, what’s next?”

The angel exhaled, slowly.

“That is the question.”

“They’re going to want to punish someone for this.”

“They’re going to want to destroy someone for this,” Aziraphale muttered, eyes widening slightly as he stared into space between them. “Gabriel is…”

“Pissed,” Crowley hissed. His body was starting to shake from the combination of leftover adrenaline, exhaustion, and the sudden stimulation of alcohol. “And my lot aren’t likely to be much better. They’re probably sharpening the pitchforks as we speak.” He looked mournfully at the door that led out to the front of the flat. “Do you think we could just hide in here, forever?”

The angel looked over, pupils fixing on his in the semi darkness.

“Hide in here forever… run away to the stars…?”

The demon groaned and ran both his hands over his face and through his hair, leaving it on end. “I was panicking, angel,” he grumbled. “It wasn’t a fully formed plan.”

“I know,” the angel said, softly. “I just think we do need one, this time. A fully formed plan, that is.”

“I know.”

Aziraphale leant forwards, pushing his glass to one side.

“There was a prophecy, one of the last in the book,” he reached into his pocket and withdrew a small, slightly charred scrap of paper. “It gave me an idea, but I’m not sure if we even could. I mean, what do you think?” He pushed the paper over the table to Crowley and the demon was reminded, dimly, of a time he had handed over a small scrap of paper with a suggestion. Hoping this one was a better way of securing their future safety, the demon turned it over and read.

“I don’t understand,” he frowned, as he finished it and looked up. “Choose our faces wisely?”

“I gave it quite a deal of thought, on the bus ride back,” the angel’s cheeks pinked slightly and he glanced at Crowley’s hand, but otherwise did not mention the handholding they had been doing at the time. “I think Agnes is referring to us having different masters.”

Crowley rubbed his face, wearily.

“Isn’t that just twice as many people wanting to kill us?”

“But each will want to punish their own man,” Aziraphale reasoned, reaching across the table to take the small scrap of paper back. “And now we know that our sides have been talking, we know that they can cooperate. We know the weapons they will have access to - weapons far worse than they possessed on their own, weapons that could kill an angel or a demon.” The angel folded the paper and placed it neatly back in his pocket. “What would your people would do to an angel they’d captured?”

“Well,” Crowley pulled a face, “I don’t really think you want to…”

“I mean to destroy it, not torture.”

“Oh!” Disturbingly that made the answer less grotesque. “Well, there are a few weapons. Lord Beelzebub mentioned a tainted sword, once, somewhere in the pits, and Hastur had a poisoned chalice for a while, but I imagine hellfire would be the safest bet. If you wanted to make sure it was, you know, really gone.” Crowley squirmed a little.

Aziraphale nodded. “And what would hellfire do to a demon - to you?”

Crowley quirked an eyebrow. “Well, I mean it isn’t pleasant, but it’s not lethal. Brings back bad memories of my time in files… And Dagon,” he added, with a little shudder.

“But no lasting damage?”

“No damage. Apart from the memories of Dagon,” Crowley clarified.

“Right.”

The demon eyed his friend closely. There was a lot of thinking going on behind Aziraphale’s face. It was the sort of expression he wore when gathering his thoughts in one of their debates. He was a creature of logic and carefully formulated plans. Having him sitting across the table was incredibly comforting. Crowley was starting to feel a bit calmer, despite it all, even though his body continued to shake.

“My people would use holy water.” The angel glanced over at him, eyes holding a shadow of reproach from an argument long past. For once, Crowley did not shy away from it. He had been very glad to have that holy water yesterday afternoon. It had given him the time to escape Hell, get to Tadfield, and assist everything in not going completely tits up, so he felt Aziraphale really had no legs to stand on in this argument, anymore. “It would destroy a demon completely,” the angel said.

“Yeah it would,” the demon agreed. “Go look next door if you want to see. I, uh,” he grimaced, “might need your help clearing that up later, actually.”

“Yes, yes. Obviously I’ll help.” Aziraphale cleared his throat. “But my point was - each of the weapons that our people will use have no effect on the other side. So what if…” the angel looked suddenly very anxious. “What if I was to go in your stead and you in mine?”

The words hung in the air for a moment. Crowley blinked.

“Well… as noble a gesture as that is, angel, I think someone might notice.”

“Not if we looked like each other.”

The demon frowned.

“What do you mean?”

The angel took a breath and explained himself hurriedly, all the words rushing out of him, as if he was forcing himself to say them against his better judgement. He had had the idea earlier, looking at the prophecy, knowing what he now knew about possession. Before the boy had returned him to his own body, he had been alive and well inside the human. It would not have lasted forever. An earthly body was not designed to take more than one soul. (It was the reason it would have been impossible for him to hitch a ride with Crowley. There was simply too much power between them. The body would have exploded. Almost certainly). But at least, now, Aziraphale knew it was possible for him to move between bodies, while here on Earth. They knew that it was possible for Crowley to possess another body, also, because he could shift himself into the snakeform and out again - and presumably he could take possession of humans too, like other demons. (Crowley confirmed this, though he also admitted, shamefacedly, that he had never tried it out. The concept had always kind of given him the creeps).

“Well, then, what if we switch?" Aziraphale suggested, sounding nervous. "What if I went down in your body and you went up in mine?”

“And the weapons designed to destroy our souls would just…?”

“Not work.”

“Well, you assume they wouldn’t work.”

The angel rolled his eyes. “Of course I assume. Nobody’s ever tried it before, dear boy. Assumptions are all we have. In reality, anything could happen. It could destroy our bodies, considering they have both been associated with our souls for so long. It could do something completely unexpected. It might all be academic, because we might be discovered long before they even get around to the bit with the fire and the water. I don’t know. I can’t know.” He gave a little sigh. “It’s just an idea.”

They stared at one another for a few long moments. Crowley was quite impressed with the plan, on the whole, but there was one very obvious flaw. Leaning onto his forearms, he dropped his head to catch the angel’s gaze and pointed it out.

“Do you realise how close we’d be, crossing over?” He asked, quietly. “How can we know it wouldn’t kill us, just being that close?”

Aziraphale blinked, then frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Something hellish like my soul, that close to something holy like yours…”

“But,” the angel frowned, “we’ve been that close before, Crowley.”

“What?” The demon spluttered, giving a little shake of his head. “No we haven’t!”

“Yes we have.”

“When?”

“Florence.” And the angel’s eyes were growing wider, now, a little anxious. “I know you don’t remember much, but surely…”

It was the demon’s turn to feel anxious.

“Florence?”

“Yes.” The angel nodded. “W-what do you remember, from that night?”

“Well,” Crowley looked down at his hands. “I mean, I remember the attempted exorcism and getting stabbed. I remember being alone and in agony, and then I remember you being there.” The demon swallowed. He couldn’t remember much more, to be honest. The whole experience had been such a long time ago and he had been in such incredible amounts of pain. It had been like he had been watching the whole thing from very far away, through a fogged glass, with a mind full of endless screaming. There had been so much pain… “I remember you taking the pain away,” he murmured, softly.

“Do you remember anything after that?”

Anxiety rippled through Crowley.

“After?” What fresh embarrassment could the angel possibly add to finding him drenched in his own blood, sweat, and piss, clinging to life by a thread, his ribcage shattered, almost destroyed by three mortals and a stupid piece of thrice-blessed wood?

Aziraphale looked uncomfortable. “Well, the wounds were quite terrible. That cross hadn’t just been blessed by a mortal, it was angelic magic - Gabriel’s, I think. It would have done more than discorporate you. Anyway, I couldn’t heal you from a distance. You were not strong enough to keep yourself alive and heal.” His eyes slipped off of Crowley’s and away, over the demon’s shoulder. “I was just trying to take the pain but I ended up with a bit more of you than I’d bargained for. We were both sort of inside both of us, for a while.”

Crowley closed his eyes, screwed up his face, then opened them again.

“That makes absolutely no sense.”

“It does.”

“No it-,” he ran his hands over his face again. “How in Heaven does that make sense, angel?”

“Both of our souls across both of our bodies.”

“But we shouldn’t be able to do that. We should-,” the demon waved his hands, in an attempt to show something repelling something else. “Like magnets, isn’t it? Opposing forces.”

“It wasn’t like that,” Aziraphale said, mildly. “You didn’t feel like you were made of anything different. You just felt… like you.”

“But-,” the demon spluttered. It was jarring, the sudden loss of ownership over a moment he thought he had understood entirely. “We’re-,” He looked back up at the angel. “How did you know being that close to me wasn’t going to kill you?”

“I didn’t,” his friend shrugged, “but I knew if I did nothing, it would definitely kill you.”

There was such beautiful sincerity in his eyes. Meeting them, the demon felt all of his anxiety and embarrassment slide away. In its place, there was only the warm heat of love. What had he ever done to deserve Aziraphale, Crowley wondered, watching the angel across the table. He couldn’t think of a single thing.

.

They agreed to try the plan. It was a strange thing, to stand in the empty space of his kitchen and hold his hand out to this creature he had called his friend for millennia, feeling the soft palm against his and wondering if it was all going to end in disaster. They had no way of knowing. They knew Hell and Heaven might still end up killing them both, but they could not do nothing. There was no option to stand still, in this equation. It was change or die, evolve and live. So, they decided to try.

Crowley could not remember the first time they had shared the space of one soul, but he would remember the second time for all eternity. In the moment before they switched places, pressing their existence into the corners of new bodies, there was a split second of intense connection. For the smallest amount of time, they could feel all that the other felt. Crowley could feel his friend’s hand in his own, but also his hand in his friend’s. He could feel the pure joy it caused the angel, to have their fingers wrapped around one another’s, and the fear of what would happen when they let go.

And there was more than sensation, too. There were fathoms and fathoms of endless emotion, and the weight of all that they had seen and done together. There were memories of millennia, as vivid as sound and taste. There was love, unbound by definition, in so many shapes Crowley could barely breathe it all in. As his soul left his body, the demon could feel his friend’s soul pressed up against him, wrapped around him like a tight embrace, and - for the first time in longer than he cared to recall - he felt safe, truly safe, and known. Aziraphale did not feel like he was made of something different at all. He just felt like Aziraphale. 

He opened his eyes with a start, and found himself staring back at his own body, its pupils blown wide with the love in Aziraphale’s soul. He wondered if he ever looked like that, when they watched one another, all those times over the years. He suspected he had.

.


	7. Soho

The flat felt desolate when the demon returned there, after dinner, back in his own body and feeling strangely out of place. The finality of what the two of them had done, in severing ties with Heaven and Hell was still reeling through him. The world was not ending. There was no imminent threat from above or below. Everyone knew what he and the angel meant to one another but, for now, they were out of danger. It should have been a time of celebration but, after the excitement of the first few hours had passed and the buzz of the champagne wore off, Crowley found himself strangely void of emotion. There was all this hope and potential, and yet he was standing in a room that looked very similar to before, in a body almost identical, apart from the new jacket. He was still alone and he knew now, more than ever before, that he did not want to be. 

He had not slept in days. His body was exhausted, ravaged by the use of his powers, but somehow he could not sleep. He undressed himself, washed, and sat in his enormous bed, wrapped in his expensive sheets, staring into the darkness, but still he could not sleep. He lay on the floor, on the wall, on the ceiling, but unconsciousness would not come. He was so tired, but all the could think of was the dreams that had been plaguing him these last few weeks, whenever he closed his eyes - dreams of the beginning, dreams of the fall. He did not want to dream of the void and wake up alone. So, he got up and dressed again, and made his way out into the dark of London. He did not take the car. He was hoping to give himself enough time to think better of his actions, but Mayfair wasn’t far from Soho and there was no amount of time that would have changed his mind anyway. 

He arrived at the front of the bookshop in the pissing rain, at half past three, and knocked. The angel answered almost immediately. They didn’t exchange any words. Crowley just sort of wandered over the threshold and started to cry, and his friend reached out and pulled him into a hug, and continued to hold him, even as he dripped rainwater all over the carpet. He held onto him for a very long time. 

Eventually, the sobs began to subside. The world, that had closed in around Crowley began to open back out again. The demon became slowly aware of himself; aware of the warmth of his friend’s skin, the angel’s cheek resting against his temple, the palm of a strong hand rubbing gentle patterns on his back. The scent of them was mixed with the smell of rain, and damp clothes, and the dust of the old shop. He could smell leather and cocoa, from the back room office, and old parchment from the shelves nearby. It was all so familiar and safe. How many hours had they spent in this place, he wondered, drinking, or talking, or him gently mocking the angel over some stupid book or another. So many hours. Probably years. Lifetimes of other beings, yet this was the first time they had held one another. They had been closer than holding, of course, but something about the simple, earthly expression of needing someone was incredibly comforting. They had spent so long in this world, spent so long in their bodies, that part of them was imprinted there. The physical mattered, now. They were changed. And that wasn’t a bad thing, after what Crowley had seen of Heaven and Hell today. Even when the tears had stopped, he held on to the angel for a little longer. 

It was Aziraphale who pulled back first, gently disentangling himself and tilting his head to meet the demon’s eyes, for once uncovered by sunglasses. He didn’t say anything, for which the demon was very grateful, just reached up and felt the coolness of his cheek and then waved his hand and the pair of them were dry again. The demon couldn’t have done the magic, he realised. For the second time in two days, his body was too exhausted. His powers were hovering just out of reach. 

Giving a sigh, the angel lowered his hand from Crowley’s side and the demon flinched at the loss of contact, but the hand the angel had moved was replaced almost immediately around his own. Their fingers locked together. Gently, his friend turned and led him towards the back of the shop, to the old couch where they had sat many times before. The demon took up his usual position, wiping at his face with his free hand. Only when he had arranged himself opposite Crowley, their fingers still twined together, did Aziraphale speak. 

“I’m not going to ask if you’re okay, because I know you’re not,” the angel said, into the familiar quiet of the old shop. “I just want to know if there’s anything I can do. Apart from be here, I mean, because I’ll be here anyway.” His thumb pressed tightly against the demon's fingers, locked beneath it. “I’ll be here as long as you need me.”

“I think I might need you forever,” the demon hissed, a little wetly. 

The angel’s mouth opened slightly. His eyes fixed on the demon's, full of incredible longing, and the moment stretched out for a few heartbeats. Then, he took a larger than usual breath and blinked a couple of times to steady himself. “I’ll be here,” he repeated, calmly. “As long as you need me.”

“Okay.” Crowley gave a shaky breath and looked down at their joined hands. He was so tired. He wanted desperately to rest, but he couldn’t leave. “All right if I stay? I can’t sleep at home.” His words were blunt, but he didn’t have energy to spare. He had cried it all out into the angel’s shoulder. “I can just rest here, while you work.”

“Don’t be silly. It’s terribly uncomfortable.” Aziraphale gave a little shaky exhale. Then, seeming to gather himself, he squeezed Crowley's hand with warm fingers and stood up from the couch. “Come with me.”

He helped the demon up and led him through the shop to the back stairs. Crowley had only been to the flat above the bookshop a handful of times, over the years - usually to pull something down from the room the angel used as extra storage. In addition to that room, he knew there was a small kitchen, a bathroom, and a bedroom. The angel led him to the latter, only letting go of his hand once they were inside, to turn on a lamp near the window. The demon stood, looking around himself dazedly as the Angel fussed with the the curtains. 

“Well, look at us,” Crowley gazed around at the pale walls and simple bed. "Who'd have thought we'd finally get here?” He looked back over, pulling on his best attempt at a grin, and found Aziraphale watching him with a fond, slightly exasperated expression. 

“Just… lie down, Crowley.” 

Relief flooded the demon. Feeling very known, very understood, he stumbled over to the bed kicking off his shoes, pulling himself free of his jacket. Then, on second thoughts, he pulled himself free of his shirt, too. Crawling onto the bed, he knelt there for a moment, looking around himself, then flopped down onto one hip. The sheets were soft and smelled wonderfully familiar, a mix of the bookshop below, with the faintest trace of aftershave, and the warmth of his friend’s skin. The demon pressed his fingertips against them, to ground himself, and looked up at the angel. 

“Will you-?” He wasn’t sure how to go about asking him to stay without it sounding like something else. 

“I can stay, if you like.”

He nodded, far too quickly. 

“Yes.”

“Okay.”

He watched as Aziraphale undid the buttons on the waistcoat then hung it over the chair by the window, then did the same with his shirt. Once he was down to a vest and shorts, the angel wandered over and sat on the side of the bed with one leg drawn up, facing the demon. 

“I don’t think I have seen your feet in about a thousand years,” Crowley said, motioning to his sock free toes. The sight of his friend, half undressed, caused faint warmth to pool inside the demon, but he was too tired to focus on it. 

“I know. It’s funny, isn’t it?” Aziraphale tilted his head slightly. “I hadn’t seen your wings for six thousand years, before the other day.”

For some reason, the comment struck home with the demon. He looked down, wondering if he had subconsciously hidden them away. There had been times, once or twice, when Aziraphale had resumed that form of himself, but Crowley had never, not on front of the angel. It was just such a visual display of how different they were, of how tainted he was. But they were more than an angel and a demon now, he thought, feeling a little bit of boldness rise within him. They had to be - what else did this all mean, otherwise? 

He folded his wings through from the void of other, beyond the universe, feeling the physical representation of them stretch his skin, feeling himself stretch into them, feeling a little bit of completion that he hadn’t entirely expected. Across the bed, the angel was looking up at them, with something close to awe in his eyes. Carefully, glancing to Crowley to see if he was allowed, he reached out and touched the tip of the nearest. 

“You are very beautiful, my dear.”

The demon trembled a little with pleasure, at the contact. A little more heat pooled inside of him. He didn’t bother trying to hide it. The angel wasn’t paying attention, anyways. His eyes were following the path his hands were tracing, down the edge of one of the long outer feathers. Then, a little cautiously, Aziraphale dropped his hand and pulled the vest he was wearing free, over his head. His wings seemed to curl out from within him. They were indistinguishable from the demon’s but for their stark contrast in colour. Breathing in, the angel stretched one out so that they almost touched, then swept them back, to rest behind him. 

“You should sleep,” he reminded the demon softly, after they had watched one another for a minute. 

The demon had slipped a few inches further down on the bed, body sagging with exhaustion. At the angel’s words, he gave into fatigue and let his body slide the rest of the way, onto his side. His wings pulled about him protectively. His head dropped onto his forearm. He did not close his eyes, though, not yet. He was clinging to the last moments of wakefulness with exhausted ferocity. 

The angel lay himself down opposite and stretched a wing out over both of their heads, shielding them from the world. Pale feathers blocked the yellow light of the lamp, casting bands of shadow across the demon’s face. Still, he did not close his eyes. 

“What’s wrong?” The angel asked. 

“I feel like shit. I thought I’d lost you.”

“You haven’t lost me.” 

“But I might have.” 

“But you didn’t. We’re safe.” They lay silently for another few seconds. Crowley’s eyelids half closed and he had to force them open again. Aziraphale moved his head slightly against the pillow. “What else is wrong?”

“I keep having these dreams,” the demon hissed, low and desperate with exhaustion. “Nightmares. They’ve been happening on and off for years but they come every night, now. I dream of the void and I wake up alone.”

Aziraphale’s expression seemed to break, somewhere beneath the surface. He fanned the wing more protectively overhead. 

“Not tonight, I promise,” he whispered back. “I have you.”

The demon’s eyelids were too heavy to keep open any longer. They closed milliseconds before his mind gave in to unconsciousness and, not even ten seconds later, his breaths were beginning to slow. He didn’t dream. The angel stayed awake until dawn, to guard him from the nightmares. 

.

The days that followed were the strangest that Crowley had ever lived through. The first morning, he woke from a dreamless sleep with strange realisations welling up within him. Though he could not pinpoint the moment that he remembered, he suddenly was able to remember old magics, truths from before the universe was real. Around lunchtime, while he was fetching coffee from the little cafe, across the road, he realised that he could remember his old name. Later on that evening, while he was following Aziraphale around the shop, listening to him talk about the way the shelves sometimes reordered themselves - an artefact, the angel assumed, of having been in the possession of a supernatural being for some time - he suddenly remembered Her voice. The voice of his creator. 

He didn’t tell the angel at first, not because he didn’t want to, or because he thought he was going mad (as he had thought when he had first started to have the dreams of the void, all those years before). He just wasn’t ready. He needed to understand, first, and the knowledge he was receiving did not always come at the same time as the understanding required to process it. 

That evening, the angel asked quietly if he wanted to stay over again. Standing behind the couch, where Crowley was draped, he reached down and brushed a few strands of hair from the demon’s forehead and told him he was welcome for as long as he wanted. The demon didn’t answer, but he lifted his hand up to take the angel’s and followed him upstairs. They shared his neat little bed again, lying across from one another. They chatted for a while about nothing and then, very tentatively, the demon reached out and touched the hard edge of his friend’s collarbone, tracing it along to the shoulder. He ran out of courage there, and withdrew his fingertips to the bedspread. 

“We need to talk about some things,” the angel had murmured, watching him with shy appreciation. 

The demon nodded. He had wanted to talk for centuries, but the timing wasn’t quite right. He needed a few days to get his head around all that had happened, and all that was happening, the strange awakening he was undergoing, deep in the centre of his soul. 

“It doesn’t have to be tonight,” the angel had assured him, “just… soon would be nice.”

Crowley had nodded again and they had shelved the conversation, for a time. They fell asleep a little closer than the night before, fingers touching in the space between them. 

The next day, the demon had woken from dreams of pure light, where he remembered how he and his brother had filled the skies with vapour, to refract the rays of his stars - back, long before there were humans, or a Heaven, or a Hell. He spent the day curled in a comfortable chair in the corner of the bookshop, leafing through some of the angel’s books on astronomy and physics, tracing the words for things he already knew, somewhere right in the depths of him. They were his things, his world. This was his sun, he realised, as he looked out through the bookshop's slightly grubby window panes, at the light streaming gently through the London street. This was his earth. The land around them was his land, covered by his rocks, his grass, his trees. He had made this, with Lucifer, and the creature that had become Micheal. They had all been twined another, once, brothers. 

Still, he didn’t tell Aziraphale. There was something not ready, some final piece in the puzzle. Over and over, he couldn’t stop thinking about the separation - how they had fallen from one another, and what it had meant. Then, on the third day, he had woken to a distant knock on the door of the old bookshop. He had wandered downstairs to find Aziraphale standing defensively across the threshold, wings spread out behind him. 

On the other side stood Micheal. 

“If you come any closer, if you even think of harming him, I will destroy you.” Aziraphale was saying, his voice quiet but cold - a thousand times more terrible than Crowley had ever heard it. 

“I did not come for that,” Micheal replied, her voice soft and insistent. “Please, hear me out.”

Crowley stepped down the last few stairs and wandered out into the open air of the bookshop. He was wearing one of the angel’s old shirts and shorts, his feet were bare on the hardwood floor. It should have made him feel vulnerable, to emerge before an archangel like he was, but it didn’t. It felt honest. It felt not so different from how they had been in the beginning. Helpless, new, a little overwhelmed. Across the room, Micheal’s eyes found him, and her expression brightened. 

“I need to talk to you,” she called over, softly. “About what the two of you did. Do you know what it means?”

Aziraphale turned and, spotting Crowley, did a little panic. His eyes swung back and forth between the archangel and the demon, wide but determined. He was terrified, Crowley could feel it, in the air. He was terrified, but he was ready to fight to protect them. 

Enormous depths of appreciation flooded the demon.

“It’s okay, angel,” he reassured his friend. “She’s not here to harm me.”

“What is going on?”

“Weird shit, to be fair.” He beckoned with one hand. “Let her in and we’ll talk about it.”

After a little encouragement, the angel stood aside and Micheal stepped over the threshold of the little bookshop. Inside, the archangel looked as uneasy as Crowley felt. She was vulnerable, now, inside the protective bounds Aziraphale had placed around his home. Slowly, cautiously, she walked over until she was standing just a few feet away from the demon. Crowley wrapped his arms around himself and, as Aziraphale shut the front door and cut off the noise of the London streets, the three eyed one another, each waiting for the others to make the first move. 

“Well, I suppose you’d better sit down,” the demon relented, eventually. “Do you drink coffee? There’s a filter upstairs. Every time I try and miracle it myself, it comes out as instant - the almighty’s idea of a joke, I’m sure.”

“I drink coffee,” Micheal confirmed. 

“Well, okay then. Take a seat.” He looked over at his angel, whose forehead was knotted with worry. “It’s okay,” he said, a little softer. “I’m going to get some clothes. You can come with me, or stay,” he nodded towards Micheal. “She’ll be fine. She just wants answers.”

“Answers?”

“I’ll explain, in a minute.” 

Aziraphale looked between them then, clearly not satisfied with the demon’s assessment that Micheal was not there to harm them, he gave a little nod and turned to face the archangel. 

“I’ll stay.”

Micheal wandered over to one of the less comfortable chairs and sat nervously on the edge of it. Aziraphale wandered over after her and stood a bit away, arms crossed, expression deeply suspicious. 

Crowley left them to their uncomfortable silence, padding back upstairs to the kitchen, first, to set the machine going, then to the bedroom to pull on jeans over his shorts. He kept the shirt he had borrowed from the angel. It was softer than his own and he could feel the love with which it had been offered, brushing against his skin. It was an undeniable comfort in a very strange time. Picking two mugs of coffee and one mug of cocoa up on his way back past the kitchen, he made his way downstairs and over to the small office corner of the bookshop. 

The two angels were sitting and standing in stoney silence. Or, rather, Aziraphale’s silence was stoney. Micheal’s was extremely anxious. She was looking around at the shop, eyes passing over books and piles of notes, trying to avoid the principality’s watchful eye. Up in Heaven, Micheal was the leader of the armies of righteousness. But she was in Aziraphale’s territory now, thought Crowley, with a hint of amusement. 

The demon wandered over, placing the drinks on the desk.

“Could we all please relax a little?” He asked the room at large. “It’s too early to be contemplating existential destruction and it’s really not necessary,” he added, more to Aziraphale than the nervous archangel. “You came to talk to me?” He asked Micheal, moving to sit in the chair across from her, resting forearms on his knees and leaning forwards. 

She nodded. 

“I know what you did, switching bodies.” 

Crowley heard Aziraphale breathe out heavily, but he did not lift his eyes away from Micheal. It was not a threat, the way she said it, and there was meaning in the way she was watching him. 

“You asked me if I knew what it meant,” he frowned, “but I’m not sure I understand.”

Micheal shifted half an inch forwards. 

To Crowley’s left, Aziraphale tensed slightly. 

“You did not face hellfire, or holy water, but you should have faced something much more hellish or holy, in being that close to one another’s soul. It should have destroyed you.” 

“Yes,” agreed Crowley. “But we knew it wouldn’t.”

“You’ve done it before?” 

The demon nodded. 

“So, your souls must be made of something that does not repel the other.”

The demon nodded again. 

Silence filled the room, heavy with expectation. 

Micheal took a deep breath, then all in a rush started to explain everything that had been happening to her, in the days since armageddon. She had been having the dreams for years, she admitted, dreams of the time before creation, of the void. They had been happening ever since the antichrist had been delivered to Earth. She had thought it was just her being afraid of what was to come, but over the past few years the memories had started to trickle back - just as they had for Crowley. She had begun to remember things from before she was an angel of Heaven, back before there was a Heaven or a Hell, back when they had all been something different but one. Then, after the world did not end, it all came flooding back even faster. Suddenly, she could remember that Crowley had been her brother. She could remember her name, his name. They had made the clouds together, she whispered, motioning out at the sky with abject terror on her face - the same terror that Crowley had been feeling, these last few days of realisation, a terror coupled with intense, intense wonder. She had even begun to remember the separation. At this point, she had thrown the demon a nervous glance. 

“I cannot speak for you, but I don’t remember there being a choice,” she told Crowley and Aziraphale, voice small with worry. “I just followed who I thought I was supposed to follow, and suddenly there were chasms of distance between us all. Suddenly there was a Heaven and a Hell, there were sides, and you and Lucifer were on the opposite one.”

She paused there and Aziraphale moved, at Crowley’s elbow. He had been very quiet up until that point, as if suspending his disbelief, but at mention of the devil he gave a soft noise of impatience. 

“What does this have to do with us, even if any of it is real?”

Crowley looked up at the angel, feeling a rush of nerves for the first time. This was the moment. Now was the time.

“I’ve been remembering, too,” he admitted. “I think we all are going to start to remember soon.” 

Aziraphale blinked at him. “Remembering? You mean, remembering the same things? But you-,” A couple of heartbeats passed in confused, hurt silence. The angel gave his head a little shake. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I wasn’t sure.” The demon beckoned him to sit down next to him. “Please, angel,” he added, when his friend showed signs of resistance. “Let me explain?” 

Relenting, clearly overwhelmed, the angel had sat down beside him on the couch and Crowley had turned to face him, clasping his hands on front of him for something to do. It was exceptionally strange to voice the things he had been remembering out loud for the first time - let alone to say them to the angel, with Micheal sitting across from them - but he did his best. 

He started at the beginning, with the dreams that had been plaguing him. Then he talked about how his powers had been growing. Micheal cut in, at this point, to confirm that the same thing had been happening to her. Holding the angel’s gaze, counting the small flecks of hazel in his eyes, the demon had told him about the memories of creation, how they had come back in little rushes, as Armageddon grew closer, and how, over the last few days, it had just been pouring in. He could remember his brothers, his sisters, pulling gravity into existence and folding power to make light. He told him of how God had instructed them to make this world. He told him about how he and Lucifer had painted the skies. And, from Lucifer, the conversation moved to Adam. Adam, son of human and angel stock, who had not just followed the path he had been made for. Adam, who had chosen to become something else.

“But what does any of that mean?” Aziraphale had said, weakly, as Crowley finally paused for breath. 

“It wasn’t for them,” Micheal said, softly. 

The two friends nearly jumped. They had almost forgotten she was there. 

“I don’t-,” Aziraphale looked, helplessly, between his friend and the archangel. 

“Armageddon,” Crowley said gently. “It wasn’t for the six billion humans who don’t even know it happened. It wasn’t even for the eight who know it did.” The demon pressed his thumbs against one another, so thankful for the grounding of his physical body. “I think it was for us. I think it was to show us that we can make a choice.”

. 

Micheal stayed for another hour, comparing notes, then she agreed to tell them if she heard any news of others experiencing the same phenomenon and carefully bid her goodbyes. As she led herself back to the door, she even managed to slip a rushed apology into the conversation. It was so rushed that Crowley, picking up the cups from the coffee table, almost missed it. 

“What we did to you…” she whispered, in Aziraphale’s general direction but unable to meet his eyes. “What we tried to do, it was wrong.” She bit her lip, then released it. “I’m sorry for my part in it. I wish I could offer more, but any more would be excuses. I just… I thought it was the right thing, but it was so very wrong, and I’m sorry.” 

She looked so pitiable that Crowley saw his angel’s resolve soften. There were a few heartbeats of silence. Micheal made to move away but then Aziraphale reached out, tentatively touching the archangel on the arm. The two angels looked into one another’s eyes, and Crowley saw their shoulders relax, the tense lines of their bodies soften slightly. Incredible relief flooded the moment and they stood, in wordless understanding, before bowing their heads - a perfect mirror image - and stepping back. 

Bidding the pair of them a soft goodbye, Micheal withdrew from the shop. 

.

In the days that followed, the archangel was not the only one to make an appearance. The plague demon that Crowley had known of old dropped by, accompanied by the nephilim who worked for Micheal - the one who had felt one of Raphael’s angels in pain, six years ago, and gone to help. Raphael’s angel came, too, a slender thing who introduced herself as Laeniel. The nephilim, created long after the beginning and the Earth, had not been experiencing sudden flashes of realisation, but Laeniel had. The morning after armageddon, she had woken with the knowledge that she had been created to drive the landmasses across the Earth’s surface. She had been one of his, she admitted, watching Crowley with a tiny bit of apprehension - pulled from dust made to make valleys and mountains out of his rock and stone. 

The plague demon had memories, also. He had been Micheal’s, made to form rings around the planets, and wrap comets in blankets of ice. He had helped with the glaciers - that’s how he had known Laeniel. They only remembered yesterday, the plague demon told him. The nephilim had been talking about it all, and so they had come to see if it was true - and if there were others.

Crowley shared with them what he remembered, which was more every day. Bit by bit, the stories began to wind together, truth emerging from them. The next day, Micheal came back again, accompanied by Raphael this time, who hadn’t been seen by the other archangels since he had given up on the whole project and decanted to Bethesda, to work in a hospital. He had remembered that he was one of Lucifer’s, he admitted fearfully. Lucifer had made him, right after he and Crowley had made Earth’s golden sun. What did that make him, now? 

“I think, just the same as all the rest of us,” Crowley suggested, to the quiet of the little bookshop. 

Raphael had seemed comforted by that. 

When they left, Aziraphale had watched him very carefully for a while, as he sat in what had become his corner of the bookshop, picking gently through a sheaf of old maps. 

“You made the sun,” he eventually said, softly. 

Crowley had looked up, embarrassed, feeling the tension created by this new difference between them. 

“I think I did, yeah.” 

“You made that angel, Laeniel.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s…” but the angel didn’t have words for whatever it was and the demon didn’t want to quantify things. They left it at that, but the angel voiced quietly a few times, over the next few days that he was confused. “Why don’t I remember anything?” He ventured, on the fifth night after Armageddon, as they sat across from one another on the simple bed in the small room upstairs. “Do you think there’s something wrong with me?”

“No, angel,” the demon murmured, reaching out to trace the line of his collarbone, up to his shoulder, then down the outside of his arm. He went a little further every time he did this, building knowledge of his friend, building courage. That night, he traced down to the notch of his wrist, slipping a thumb into the shallow where his pulse throbbed, soft and steady. Warmth filled him, almost totally, as they sat across from one another, half undressed - that beautiful warm stage of desire, just before desperation. “There’s not a thing wrong with you,” he murmured, drawing his thumb in a circle along the underside of his friend’s wrist. The sensation caused something deep in his abdomen to tauten. “You are perfect.” 

The angel threw him a frustrated little look and pulled away to lie down on the bed, half curled like a child with his back to Crowley. The demon lay down behind him, and gave him a few minutes to stew, before reaching out and stroking the back of his head, fingers sliding through flaxen hair. After a few minutes, the angel rolled over and slipped his fingers in between Crowley’s, and they fell asleep like that, their hands grounding them in the moment, away from eternity - which seemed to stretch out in all directions. 

.

On the morning of the sixth day, a man appeared at the door to deliver a package. A long box, which Crowley signed for and set upon the table. It was in his friend’s name, but the angel had not yet risen from bed. (He had been up half the night, tossing and turning, so the demon had left him to sleep into the morning). Placing the box aside, Crowley had gone back to his reading and didn’t really think about it again until well past noon, when he realised that the angel still hadn’t woken. Stretching, he pulled himself from the couch and, grabbing the box, wandered up from the shop to the bedroom at the rear of the small flat. He had been surprised, on entering the bedroom, to find Aziraphale not sleeping but sitting on the edge of the bed, staring quietly out the window. 

“Aziraphale?” He questioned, pushing into the room but hovering the door. His friend had a soft frown on his face. “You okay?”

“I remembered,” the angel said, calmly. There was golden sunlight streaming in through the half open window, catching in his hair and eyelashes. He had always been the most beautiful in sunlight, thought the demon. He was made for sunlight, Aziraphale. 

“What did you remember?” The demon asked, a little cautiously. He wasn’t sure if this was going to be a good revelation or a terrifying one. His had been a bit of both. 

"I remembered what I was made for." The angel turned, fixing on him with slightly over-bright eyes. “It's the gate. It's always been about the gate.” 

“The gate?”

“Eden’s gate.” Aziraphale elaborated. “I just woke up and I realised… I can remember where the garden is, where it all started.”

Crowley frowned. 

“Angel, I’ve looked for the garden a dozen times, over the years. It’s gone.”

“No,” Aziraphale shook his head, a small smile growing on his face. “It’s just that nobody else can find it, or open it. That's the point. I’m the gatekeeper.”

The demon shook his head.

“I-I don’t understand.”

Aziraphale’s smile widened slightly. “The gate wasn’t a gate between the inside and the outside of some place on Earth. It was a gate between Earth and Her. It was never for the humans. It was made for us. I always thought I was created to keep the humans in the garden, to protect them from anything that came from the outside - and I was for that, but I was for more, as well. I was to keep the gate and the key safe from Heaven and Hell, until the end. Safe on Earth.” 

“The key?” Crowley asked. 

The angel motioned towards the package in his hand. 

The demon looked down at it too. 

“What - this is a key?” He frowned. “How do you even know what’s in here?”

“I’m not sure. But I can feel it.” Aziraphale held out his hand. 

Crowley walked over and placed the package on the bed beside the angel. It was a long box, wrapped in neat brown paper, tied with twine around the middle. There were no words or tracking stickers on any side of it and the demon wondered, suddenly, how the postman had known to bring it here. Then he wondered how he had not noticed when he had signed for the package. Then he stopped wondering, because he realised that the whole business was rather above his pay grade. 

Sitting on the other side of the package, the demon watched his friend unpick the knot and unwrap the box carefully. The lid came away to reveal a familiar object, one that they had only just handed back, one which had been passing in and out of Aziraphale’s possession since the beginning. 

“Holy fucking Hell,” the demon muttered. 

The angel frowned at him.

“Heck,” he corrected, a little unable to stop himself. 

They looked down at the sword, currently not flaming but glinting innocently in the tissue paper lining of its box. It was shinier than it had been, the other day. It looked as it had done that first time Crowley had seen it, from a great distance, up on the walls of Eden - washed clean of all the blood and humanity that had happened in the intervening years. The angel reached down and ran a finger along the hilt, an expression of deepest thought written in the lines of his face. 

“This was always the key.” He gave a little nod. “She forged it in the heat of one of your stars.” 

Crowley looked up, eyes widening slightly. “My stars?"

“Yes. Your stars, my sword, our garden, Her gate.” Aziraphale smiled. “It was only to come together when we were ready.”

“Ready for what?”

“I think… to make a choice.”

The angel was smiling and the gentle pleasure coursing through him drew Crowley’s attention away from the sword entirely. He had his memories, he thought, watching Aziraphale trace the barely visible engravings along the blade between them. He had his memories and now they had a purpose. They were to go to the gate. What happened there, they could not know. If it was something to do with leaving the Earth, Crowley didn’t think he would be ready, but he had to trust that someone knew what they were doing. The plan - though different to anything they had expected - had got them this far. And, wherever they were going, he and Aziraphale were going together. That seemed to have been meant, as well. Neither of them would have got this far without the other. 

“I suppose they were meant to have it, then,” the angel piped up, after a minute. “The humans,” he clarified, fixing Crowley with a proud little smile. “It was supposed to stay safe, on Earth. Giving it away was the right thing to do, after all.”

The demon felt a grin split across his face. In the middle of all the new and terrifying changes in the world, that tone brought them right back to normality. It was so righteous, so pompous, so perfectly Aziraphale. 

“Hang on,” he chuckled, leaning forwards to catch the angel’s eyes. “Is this you feeling clever, having set in motion a prophetic move that played out over sixty centuries?” Beside him, Aziraphale puffed up slightly, his expression shifting towards the indignant. Crowley’s smile only grew. “Because you might impress the others with that, angel, but I was there. I saw the whole thing…” He leant in slightly. His friend watched him, eyebrows almost in his hairline. “You didn’t have a flaming clue what you were doing.” 

They stared at one another for a long few seconds, Aziraphale’s expression frozen in affront, then the demon raised his eyebrow just a fraction and a grin split across his friend’s face. The affront dissolved and suddenly they were both shaking with laughter, eyes full of one another. They didn’t stop for a very long time. 

.


	8. The plan

The shadow of the void seemed to hang over the desert valley when the angel and the demon arrived, in the quiet hours of the early morning. The whole scene was painted blue by a pregnant full moon. The sands and scrub were thrown into sharp relief. Overhead, the sky was spectacularly clear. Indigo gave way to washes of darkest purple, on the eastern horizon. Towards the west, they could see the stars as if they had been freshly painted there. She had chosen the clearest spot for Her garden, Crowley thought, looking up at balls of light which had once been his but were now sort of everyone’s, by dint of time. The stars were clearer here than anywhere else on Earth. He had held them in his hands once, he thought, pressing his feet into sand still warm from the day. Now he supplicated himself before them, searching for answers. It all felt perfectly appropriate.

The leather of his shoes brushed gently against the demon’s thumb. He was holding them, so he could walk barefoot. He had always enjoyed being barefoot. There was something connected about it. He almost liked to imagine it helped him feel the world turn. Beside him, the angel was barefoot too, but he had left his shoes behind him, in the sand. It was a strange move. The demon wondered, faintly, if he didn’t think they were coming back. Personally, Crowley couldn’t figure out what he was hoping for. He didn’t think he was ready to leave, but he also knew inherently that things could not stay the same, after tonight. This was the end of an old existence. The start of something new. And whatever happened, he reminded himself, they were together. So it wasn’t so frightening anymore. 

They were more than together, actually, as they stepped forwards through the sand. They were part of a tribe. They had backup. Micheal was wandering over a dune, several hundred feet away, hand in hand with one of her brothers. Laeniel and her nephilim friend and the plague demon, Abaddon, were walking behind them. One of the Dukes of Hell, Leraje, walked a few paces behind them, the demons Osi and Phenex and angels Poyel and Zephon walking beside her. Two of Raphael’s healers were helping Gabriel to limp over a narrow stream bed. The archangel had found the revelations of the last week very difficult to bear. Crowley sympathised, despite still thinking that the guy was a complete asshole for what he had been willing to do to Aziraphale. It must have been hard, spending six thousand years as the messenger of God, only to realise you’d never been given the full story. It was almost easier for their side, the demon suspected, watching a few of the nephilim gambling over a nearby dune - Dagon snapping at them when they got too close and spooked one of the principalities. Crowley watched them all, and the hundreds more behind, and marvelled at how they had come to this - this mass of hope, seeking answers in a desert, allegiances laid aside in the hope of something greater. Children seeking their God. 

Their gatekeeper was walking just ahead of Crowley, at the front of the procession if you didn’t count a few of Dagon’s nephilim, who had bounded off to one side. Aziraphale had been very quiet since they had arrived, half an hour previously. The demon threw him cautious looks, every now and then but, though the angel occasionally shot him a reassuring smile, he said nothing. 

The night was oddly welcoming, despite being still and dark. After the last few days of uncertainty and revelations, Crowley was glad to be moving, to be doing something. He felt there had been a lot of existence building up to this. This was a culmination of something, or the answer to a question he couldn’t quite frame. He wasn’t sure what was going to happen but he was taut with anticipation. The angel beside him seemed taut, also. Crowley suspected he was quite anxious about his role in it all. It must have been rather nerve wracking, having so many demons and angels following his lead. What his angel needed right now was support, not more questions. So, Crowley paused to check that everyone was following as they should be and to pull one of Dagon’s nephilim from a sandbank they had become wedged in. (The Demon Lord threw him a grateful look, as he did so. Dagon had many faults, but Crowley supposed being a single father to five hundred half-humans wasn’t easy. He gave the other demon a tense smile before hurrying off after Aziraphale). 

They came to the place where the garden had been in the darkest hour of the night, as Crowley was sure had been intended. Above them, the stars stretched into the never-ending sky. Nothing separated the patch of dirt they stood on from any other patch, except for the fact that Aziraphale knew it was here. He walked over to the gnarled stump of what had once been a tree, and stood before it, sword in hand. Crowley watched him, expectantly. 

The angel threw a look over his shoulder at the demon before he acted. His eyes were afraid, but his shoulders were set. It was the sort of look a man gave before plunging into battle, the demon thought, and he supposed this was their battle. This was the final battle that had been foretold in the books of men and angels, but it was not a battle of swords or fire, or even supernatural entities. It was a battle for souls. A battle within souls, between the heaven and hell that lived inside all of them. There would be a choice to make, the demon thought, whatever happened next. Holding his breath, he watched as Aziraphale placed both hands on the sword, brought it back, then plunged it into the heart of the gnarled wood. 

At once, the world seemed to shift on its axis. It was not a physical sensation - it was far from physical - but Crowley shuddered with the intensity of it. Suddenly, it was all he could do to cling to the surface of the Earth, as the ruins of a great garden sprung up around them. There were trees, greater and taller than any trees they had ever seen before. There were plants mysterious beyond belief, and colours that hadn’t been invented yet. There were the sounds of a million creatures and humans, all laughing and calling, and living. It was everything, all at once, then it was gone and they were standing in the lee of ruined walls, stones crumbling into the sand around them. Before them was the Eastern gate, silhouetted against a paler patch of sky. Dawn was in the distance, and light, and the thrumming presence of Her. 

The angel left the sword deep in the stump of the tree - the tree which had been the same tree the the Serpent had led the humans to, all those years before. It was poetic, the demon thought, watching his friend step forwards, shaking and so brave, towards the gate. They were nothing if not poetic. 

The gate was silent - an archway of stone which the demon thought looked vaguely familiar. He thought it looked so very like the gate to Hell that he had stepped through, all of time ago. Or, perhaps, the gates of Heaven and Hell had been one and the same thing, and the gates to eternity were little different. Perhaps all that mattered was what was in your heart, when you stepped through them. Crowley watched with bated breath.

Aziraphale stepped to the entrance and held out his hand. For a moment, it seemed he was hesitating, then Crowley realised he was talking, softly. There were words, things he knew, that were beyond anything in the universe that Crowley had created. Awe filled the demon and he stared after his friend, hoping that at some point he would turn, hoping that he would hold out his hand for Crowley to join him, because if Aziraphale stepped into that archway without him Crowley wasn’t sure what would happen. Whatever happened next, whatever they did, it had to be together. He could not lose him again. 

The angel finished speaking and stepped back. Then, just as it seemed that nothing were going to happen, from the darkness there came light. It was blinding, all consuming. It was everything they expected it to be - perhaps, exactly what each of them expected it to be. She knew, after all, what they all needed from their God.

.

What followed for Crowley did not follow for Aziraphale. Each being present was suddenly in a world all of their own. The desert sort of slipped away, into insignificance. Everything slipped away, until they were just bathed in the light and their own thoughts, and the distant realisation of Her voice. 

_“And what about you, demon?”_

Her words were so familiar. He knew them inside out. He remembered the symmetry of them, from the last time they had spoken - beyond time ago. He was no more prepared to answer now, than he had been then. Instead, he asked questions. He had always had so many questions. He had always had the greatest imagination, of all her angels. 

“What do you want from us?” He shouted into the light. “Why are we here?”

_“This is my gate. This is your choice. I have given you all the tools to make it, but I cannot make it for you.”_

Crowley stared at the gate, the only thing still present in the light. He was alone, except for her. Though, in her, he could feel all the goodness of the world. He could feel joy and wonder, euphoria and knowledge, strength and sensation. He could feel Aziraphale - all that they were and had been and could be, all as one thing. As he breathed in Her one love, he could taste the different strains of it. He could feel love as he had known it before, as simple love, as well as all of its strange, human permutations. He could feel love for the world, and for a child, and for a friend, and for a lover. He could feel love that hurt, and love that healed. He was more than he had been, when first he stood before her, Crowley thought. The last time, the answer to her question had been written. This time, he had a choice - like Adam had had a choice - like the humans had choice. He forced himself to be bold. 

“Between what am I choosing?” He asked her.

He almost felt her smile. He had always been bold. It was one of the reasons She loved him, so very, very much. 

_“If you come back to me, you will remain as you are, and I will protect you forever. We will travel from here into eternity together. We will create again. We will see other universes, other worlds, other times. I will give you everything I can give, but there are some things I cannot give you. I cannot give you life. You were made to be perfect. That was my mistake. Life needs imperfection, to grow, to evolve. I made the humans to rectify my mistake. I left you amongst them, to learn from their mistakes and their triumphs, to see imperfect life living in a perfect world - to see them make that world imperfect, but also greater. Now, you must make your choice. Perfection or life. What you are and what you could be. It is up to you.” _

“What will happen to us, if we stay?” The demon asked. “What would we become?” There was wind rushing all around him, louder and stronger than the greatest earthly storm. It was deafening, but Crowley could still hear Her more clearly than he had ever heard anything in his long life. 

_“I cannot say. Those possibilities lie before you. There are many paths that you might take. But know that if you chose life, in this universe, then you are bound to its fate. You will never return to the void and you cannot leave with me.” _

“And… and you definitely have to leave, do you?” The demon screwed up his face in the light. The idea of Her leaving hit him like a terrible agony, deep inside. It was the realisation of an impending final blow. The final cut. It had started so long ago, but this was the end, and it hurt every bit as much as the beginning. “You can’t hang around a bit longer?”

_“There are many universes in my domain, Crowley. I cannot always be here, with you. There are other wonders that require my attention. If you come with me, you will see them. If you stay, then you stay as a guardian of this world that we made together. You were made for one another - my children and my humans. You will need to teach one another. You will also need to learn.” _

Her voice was warm inside him. 

“What if I don’t know what I want,” the demon whispered, feeling a rush of panic. All of the possibilities were running through him, all the millions of things he could be, all of the things he could see, and love and create. He could feel them all in the moment. 

_“Do you know what you need?”_

He did. It calmed him. 

“Yes.”

_“Then choose it. Know yourself, the rest will follow.”_

“Do I…” he didn’t know how to ask. He didn’t know to tell Her that he could not make this choice alone, that his soul no longer belonged only to him. How did he say that to Her, to the one who had pulled him from nothing?

He felt Her smile, felt a great wash of Her love. 

_“You have time,” _she answered his unasked question. _“The gate will remain until all have chosen. Those who wish can come when they are ready.”_ They were hovering on the edge of goodbye, now, and the demon wasn’t ready. He was never ready. He had never been very good at letting go. It was why She had chosen him to be the one, in the garden, in the beginning. He had needed to hold on for so very long. _“It will be okay, little one. Love the world and all that I have made, and you are loving me. If there is love, then we are never apart.” _

The ground he was standing on felt suddenly firmer, the warmth of Her love somehow closer, even though he was hearing Her voice for the last time in all of eternity. It was the warmth that came at the end of an embrace, lingering after someone you loved pulled away. It was the softness in their eyes. The demon looked up from the surface of Her world, into the stars he made with Her light. He took a breath. He was ready.

_._

She woke them back in London, in roughly the same spot that they had been standing before transporting themselves to the desert. Crowley spent the first few seconds after his return in a state of mild panic, turning on the spot and calling out Aziraphale’s name, until the angel had made himself known in the back room of the shop. Overwhelmed, the demon had stumbled to him and pulled him into a hug, and they had stood that way for a long time, squeezed tightly together. Afterwards, they moved to the couch and sat there in silence, hands clasped comfortingly, not quite sure if they could face talking about it all yet. There would be time, Crowley thought, as the minutes ticked by, and the angel had a little cry beside him. There would be time. 

.


	9. New beginnings

A number of demons and angels turned up, over the next few days, to tell Crowley that the places that had been Heaven and Hell now looked the same, and that there was nothing left for them there. (Crowley wondered whether they hadn’t always been the same and it was really what people had brought with them that set the two apart). The human souls had been moved on somewhere else and, by the sounds of it, many of the of the celestial occupants had moved on too. There was no sign of Beelzebub, or Hastur. Gabriel had followed his creator without a backward glance at Earth, limping gratefully towards repentance hand in hand with one of his brothers. Angel by demon, Heaven and Hell had emptied until there were only about half of them left. 

Those who did stay began to turn up on Crowley’s doorstep by the dozen. He had to create an atrium of the entrance hall, to accommodate them all. Micheal had accidentally marked the pair of them out as a point of contact, while she had been spreading the news, and the demon felt slightly beholden to the city of London not to just dump the lot of the supernatural entities out on her streets at random. (There was still some residual effect from being a demon or an angel for six thousand years, after all. It didn’t just wear off overnight and a large city had a delicate balance). So, he tried to even them out as best he could across the continents, so as to avoid causing any riots or religious demonstrations. 

Those who had prior experience of Earth weren’t too much of a problem. Many of them had haunts and places to go. Crowley gave them his contact details and sent them on their way telling them to report back in in a week’s time, to make sure nobody was in any difficulties, and so that they could all decide, together, what they were going to do with themselves. The rest, Micheal helped split into groups roughly balanced with angelic and demonic power. They left Uriel at the airport with the plague demon, who had a business venture in Columbia that could use the angel’s mind for math. (Something to do with selling insects for crop pollination. Crowley didn’t want to hear any specifics). The demon of poor life choices headed off in the direction of Siberia, with a guardian angel in tow, talking vaguely of a winter walking tour. Sandalphon was assimilated into an accountancy firm in Slough before Crowley even had time to consider him. 

As Micheal sorted out train tickets to Edinburgh for Phenex (demon) and Zephon (angel), Crowley spent his afternoon driving one of Gabriel’s guardian angels up to Oxford, where he planned on looking after lonely first year students, and then carted three of Dagon’s nephilim over to Shoreditch, where they could blend right in without causing too much damage. The fourth remaining nephilim - the one who had spied for Micheal - blushingly told Crowley that the angel he had saved, six years before, had offered him space in her flat in Paris. After thanking Crowley again for all his help (and, in Laeniel’s case, thanking him for her existence), the pair had slunk off towards the Eurostar, looking slightly too pleased with themselves, hands brushing just a little too frequently. Crowley was left feeling very old, and wondering what had happened to traditional courting methods, like staring longingly at someone for a few thousand years and hoping they noticed. Romance was clearly a dying art. 

By the time he had got rid of the last of his hangers-on, it was well into the next morning and Crowley was anxious to check on Aziraphale. The last two days had been the first time the had been apart, since Armageddon, and he was beginning to feel the angel’s absence as an almost physical ache. Having finished sorting angels and demons, Micheal had taken up residence on Crowley’s couch and given into overwhelmed tears. It seemed cruel to move her, so the demon said he’d be back in the next couple days, logged her into Netflix, and left her to get on with it. A good cry was balm for the soul, he reasoned, as he locked the door and ventured over to the Bentley. And he had rather more important things to be doing than refill the former archangel’s Kleenex box. He and Aziraphale had futures to discuss. 

.

The journey over took rather miraculously less than the ten minutes it should have taken, despite the rush hour traffic. Realising he had arrived at around the time that breakfast usually happened, the demon parked haphazardly on front of one of the angel’s favourite cafe’s and picked up some coffee and pastries, before heading over to the small bookshop on foot. Arriving on the doorstep, Crowley found himself quite unprepared for the rush of nerves that rose up inside of him. He stood for a moment, steadying himself, trying to summon the courage to knock. This was it, he thought, stomach clenching. This was the end of the line. He was going to have to say it all. Out loud. With his mouth. 

He stood there for a good three minutes, trying to work up the courage to knock. In the end, it did not matter that he failed. Aziraphale walked past and spotted him through the window, and came over to let him in. Making sure the ‘closed’ sign was turned the right way over, the angel indicated that they should head straight through to the back and the demon did as he was told, feeling his rush of nerves translate into a rush of excitement and the sudden inability to walk normally. Bounding over the threshold, he tripped up the stairs into the back room, managing (miraculously) not to spill the coffee and doing a bit of swearing before throwing himself down in what had become his favourite chair. Then, taking a couple of slow breaths to regulate his pounding heart, he waited for the angel to follow him through.

Aziraphale did not appear, however. By the sound of it, he had stopped to faff around with one of the bookshelves, en-route. Crowley could hear him moving stacks of paper around, making work for himself, putting off the inevitable moment that he had to come and take part in the conversation. The demon closed his eyes, feeling his heart throb faster - despite his best attempts to slow it down. This was going to have to be his effort, he realised. The angel had done enough leading, over the last couple of days. He needed a break. 

“Aziraphale?” He called through, softly. “Can you come here a minute… please?” The demon gave a little grimace at himself for the ‘please’, but using the angel’s name seemed to have worked. Aziraphale had stopped shuffling busily around. 

A few moments later, he appeared in the doorframe, looking a little ruffled in his waistcoat and shirt, sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He had a smudge of dust on his cheek and he was regarding Crowley very cautiously indeed. 

“Overhauling the archives?” The demon couldn’t help but ask. 

“Thought i’d pull the Greeks out from under the staircase. It’s only fair to move everyone around, now and then.”

“Suppose it is,” Crowley leant back in his chair, clasping his hands in his lap, pressing his feet into the floor. Aziraphale stood very still, watching him. He had not so much as leant against the doorframe. His jaw was set, his back very straight, shoulders pulled back defensively. He was scared, Crowley thought. Well, that made two of them. “Do you mind if I distract you for a bit?” He asked, his voice just a shade higher than it usually was. 

The angel shrugged, but didn’t move forwards. 

The demon tried another tact. 

“I brought croissants.” 

“Oh,” light eyes darted over to the coffee and croissants, sitting on the coffee table, but the angel didn’t move closer. “Thank you. That was very kind.”

“Yeah, it was. Can you get over here, please? You’re making me nervous and I have a limited amount of nerves left, at the moment. Micheal is living on my couch and I spent two hours in a confined space with Dagon’s youngest, yesterday.” 

“Oh really?” 

“Yes. They’ve all decided to hang around for a while. Or until the end of the universe, anyway.” Aziraphale’s eyes slipped away from his with the practiced ease of a man-shaped creature who had been avoiding eye contact for six thousand years. Crowley felt a pang of anxiety. It was time to come around to the conversation part of the conversation. “Angel-,”

“You’ve decided, haven’t you?”

The demon exhaled, slowly. 

“Yes.” He didn’t want to lie. He didn’t want to stretch the truth. For the first time, this was going to be one hundred percent pure, unadulterated honesty. It was probably going to hurt, but he had promised himself that this was what he was going to do. Lay it all out. Say everything he had wanted to say for the last thousand years.“Can you please get in here and sit down?” he asked the angel. “I need to know you’re listening.”

Hesitantly, Aziraphale looked up, then nodded and made his way over to the seat opposite Crowley’s. As the demon took off his sunglasses, to give the moment the eye contact it deserved, the angel arranged himself neatly on the edge of his chair, fingers wrapped so tightly around themselves that his knuckles went white.

“Okay.” Crowley gave himself a steadying breath, then stated his case as bluntly as he could. “I’ve decided I’m going to stay.”

The angel gave a small, sad smile. 

“I knew you’d say that.”

Ignoring the weight behind his friend’s words, Crowley pushed himself to elaborate. He needed to be explicit. Aziraphale needed to know where he stood and why. There was no space for guessing, not anymore. 

“I just feel like I’m not done here,” Crowley said, feeling his voice grow a little more steady. His fingers were still shaking, but it was not the convulsive shaking of the days after armageddon. He was okay. He was doing this and he was going to be okay. “There are places I want to see,” he told the angel. “Things I want to try. This world is only just getting started. The big show-,” he motioned towards the window, at the blurry shapes of pedestrians passing by. “Earth, and all her technicolour morons.” 

The angel glanced up just long enough to show reproach, then looked back down at his clasped hands. Crowley wanted desperately to reach out and lift his chin, to force him to meet his eyes, but he didn’t. Some things were easier to hear when looking away. He understood that. He lived a large proportion of his life behind mirrored glass. For now, the angel could just listen.

He took a great sigh and continued. 

“It’s just… we’ve all been so bogged down in the idea of the world ending, that we haven’t really thought about what would happen if it didn’t. I mean, what if they don’t destroy it? What if they actually survive and reach out into the stars, and spread across the galaxies? What if they use their stupid ape brains and work together, for once, rather than driving one another away? It could be beautiful, you know,” he slouched back in his chair. “I want to see it. I want to be a part of it. And if that means dying one day, when it’s all through, then I’m okay with that.” 

A few moments passed in silence. Tiny specks of dust floated through the bands of light, drifting in through the grubby window panes. Aziraphale took a slow, steadying breath, then looked up - not quite at Crowley, but in his general direction. 

“Have you thought about what you’d be giving up?” He asked the demon, his words calm and quiet. “You were made to create, Crowley. You were made to be up there, at her side, building worlds.” 

Building worlds. The sun thing had really got him, thought Crowley, watching his friend’s face. He could see that familiar line over one brow, which didn’t match up with the rest of the lines on his forehead. He could see the tension around his eyes that he got whenever he was holding something back. All the little details of him - the demon knew them all by heart. After six thousand years, he could have drawn the angel’s face from memory. He could more or less predict his next words, too, but he stayed silent and let the angel say them anyway.

“I was made for this world,” Aziraphale murmured, unclenching his hands and looking down at their palms, the palms which had held the sword and opened the gate of Eden. Hands which God had made to defend the world against all of Heaven and Hell, if necessary. “I was made to guard them. You were made for creation.”

The demon stared at him, feeling a swelling sense of discomfort. He had always been uncomfortable when Aziraphale pointed out the demonic and the angelic differences between them, but this was worse somehow. He couldn’t pinpoint why.

“I was made just like everyone else was made,” he replied, carefully. He didn't want to contradict Aziraphale, but sharing his view was important. “We weren’t born. We weren’t given life, or choice. We did what we did because we were made to do it, perfectly. Now, there are more options. We can choose how to live… do things because we want to…” he drifted off there, because ‘things’ covered a whole variety of actions. Some of them filled them with terror. Some of them filled him with a warm, shaky feeling that made his body feel tight.

The angel looked up at him and Crowley felt he might be able to sense what was going through him. There was a little too much understanding in his eyes. 

“She showed me you,” he stated, after watching Crowley for nearly half a minute. 

The demon felt his eyebrows raise. 

“What?”

“She showed me what you were, before - your true form.”

“Pfft,” the demon let out a breath of air, looking sideways at his friend. “You know my soul, angel. You’ve been right there, with me, beyond all this,” he motioned at the world around them. “We’ve been as close as anyone can be… You’ve seen me.”

“Not the way she saw you, in the beginning.”

“Oh,” he wrinkled his nose, “its not-,”

“It is important, Crowley,” the angel stressed and, finally, he turned himself to face the demon properly. He was leaning forwards in his chair, the need to make himself heard seemingly overcoming his fear. “She showed me everything you were and could be. All of the good,” he paused, “and the terrible.” 

Crowley looked away. 

That made him feel uncomfortable. He had done some really shitty things in his time and he had the potential for a lot more. He had imagination. That meant phenomenal power to create, but also incredible power to destroy. He had created in her name but he had also taken. Aziraphale had seen both here on Earth, but not as She had seen. Not like before. She had seen him crush worlds into dust. She had seen him rewrite solar systems, fold stars in on themselves until they became sucking chasms that swallowed even light. She had seen the inanimate total annihilation of his supernovae; she had seen him give in to abandon.

“Is that…” Crowley cleared his throat and started again. “Is that what’s…” he didn’t know how to finish the sentence. ‘Upsetting you’ was too petty. Aziraphale wasn’t upset, he was absolutely terrified and he was right to be. He was making a choice of eternal proportions. He had every right to be terrified and the demon did not have the right to feel awkward that he was taking the matter of his true nature into account. 

“I know we’ve all been there, in our own ways,” the angel spoke up, sparing him the need to finish the sentence. “I’ve destroyed dynasties, re-written histories, changed the course of countless peoples, in the name of Her plan. I’ve allowed things to happen that have caused unfathomable suffering.” He looked down at his hands again. Crowley wanted to bridge the space between them, to offer comfort, but he held himself back. His friend needed to speak. “All I mean by it is that you have a potential that you could never fill, here on Earth. You have a side of you that was made to be up there, with her. There is so much that you could do, and be, and build. You should not feel tied to this world. Not because of your history here. Not because of… anything.” The rise of his cheeks flushed and he looked away, towards a neat pile of books on the desk beside them. “You could start again.” His throat worked slightly, as if he were swallowing back words, or tears, or pain. 

Warmth spread through the demon. Crowley almost pressed it back before realising that he didn’t have to anymore. He had come here to be brutally honest. He had come to lay it all out and move forwards. This moment was part of that.

“I don’t want to start again,” he said carefully, opening his hands towards the angel, a mirror of the way the angel was holding his hands, across the way. “I’ve had enough new beginnings to last me a lifetime.” He took a deep breath. “Anyway, I didn’t just come here to tell you I wanted to stay. There’s more to it than that.”

The angel’s head jerked up. 

“More?” He sounded uneasy. 

“Yeah.” Fear surged up through the demon. He had run out of intro. They were coming to the crux of the conversation, now, and suddenly it felt easier to direct his words to Aziraphale’s left ear rather than to his eyes. “Its just… it’s like I said,” he cleared his throat. “I don’t want to just exist anymore. I want to live.” It cost him so much to say this aloud - millennia of denial and self doubt. The words gouged holes in the walls he had built to protect himself and suddenly cold reality was rushing in, finding the demon beneath warm and vulnerable. “She told us that we had a choice, to stay as we are or to be like the humans, and grow. And they experience life in ways we don’t, angel. They have homes and families. So, I need to ask, because I want a home and a family…” he closed his eyes for this bit. He couldn’t quite manage it with them open. “And I love you, in more ways than we were built to imagine. I want you with me. So-,” he opened his eyes, staring down at his fingernails. “I suppose I’m here to ask if you’ll stay with me?”

He looked up.

The angel was staring at him, lips parted slightly, pupils wide. It looked as if he might have stopped breathing. Everything about him seemed static, hanging on the words now free in the air between them. Then his fingers twitched and, for a second, Crowley thought he might reach out across the gap between them. Hope rose in his chest, but the angel did not reach out. He stood, and pushed his chair back, and paced away towards the bookshelves. 

The demon watched him go, so caught off guard that his heart didn't even have the chance to sink. But, to his eternal relief, Aziraphale did not head for the front door. His pacing took him back along the far side of the room, then around again. The shop was not big enough for him to go far. Eventually, he came back around the corner of the office and halted, gripping the back of the chair as if it were all that was keeping him upright. He fixed Crowley with a desperately apologetic stare. 

“How can I make that choice?” He asked, a harshness in his voice that the demon had not heard before. “How can I say I’ll stay if I know it means you won’t go? Being here was my purpose, Crowley,” he breathed, voice dropping to nearly a whisper. “I was made to guard the gate, to guard humanity. I have never existed beyond this world, I don’t even know if I can be anything else!”

“I’m… I’m not asking you to,” the demon stammered, confused. 

“You’ve not even thought about it, have you? What if it all does go wrong? What if they _do_ destroy the world, or there’s a great war, or we just get unlucky and one or both of us is destroyed?” His breathing was coming faster, now, the panic building in him. “What if staying here kills you? I love you, of course I do, but I can’t watch that happen. I can’t choose something that might hurt you.” He faltered at the expression on the demon’s face. “What?” He asked. Then, correctly interpreting the way Crowley had straightened slightly in his seat as a reaction to his confession of love, he exhaled and looked away. “Oh, for Heaven’s sake, Crowley.” His cheeks flushed pink, a proper blush this time, spreading across his nose, and back down the nape of his neck. He paced away, doing a small circuit of the back room before coming to stand a few feet to the left of where he had been, arms crossed tightly on front of his waistcoat. “You know how I feel. You’ve known for so long. We both have.”

Vibrant waves of joy were shooting through the demon. He could barely stay seated, even though he had promised himself he would.

“I knew, but I didn’t _know._” His voice was slightly rough, almost not his own. “Not for sure. I can’t feel love like you can.” 

Aziraphale watched him for a long moment, then closed his eyes. “Of course you can’t. I’m sorry. That was a stupid thing to say.”

“It’s fine,” Crowley murmured back. “I did know. It’s just… well, it’s nice to hear.” 

The tension in the room kind of slid away. Walking slowly back towards him, Aziraphale pulled his chair towards the demon, a little closer this time, and sat down right on the edge of it. His voice, when he spoke, was not angry or panicked but very quiet, and very afraid. 

“The point I’m trying to make,” he said across the two feet between them, “is that we are so very different. We were made for different things. I’m almost new, compared to you and Micheal. I mean, you’ve _made_ angels older than me. I’ve never known other worlds, or pulled stars from the ether, or wrapped skies around oceans. I’m just a gatekeeper, and I’m pretty sure I nearly fucked that up.” He closed his eyes. “Even if we were to survive this world, and everything goes to plan, there’s the rest of time to consider. How could I ever…?” He trailed off, miserably. 

“What?” Crowley tilted his head. 

“Be enough.”

The demon’s lips parted in surprise.

How could he ever be enough? What the Hell was enough, if it wasn’t this? Six thousand years of beauty and wonder, and memories, and the promise of more. Aziraphale carried the promise of the rest of the universe together - of a life together. He had been every type of love, to Crowley. He had been the gentle love of something familiar, in the beginning, when the demon had needed something against the huge otherness of the world. He had been the balance of something different as they grew older, and the demon realised that there was no such thing as pure good, or pure evil. He had been a friend, as Crowley had learned to love with friendship. He had been a companion, to help shoulder the weight of all they had seen and done. He had been the creature who sat opposite him, in that pool near the villa, and been so gentle. He must have been able to feel all that new emotion, rising up within the demon, that day. He must have known how overwhelmed Crowley had been, but he had been so gentle, even when the demon had lashed out and run. And then he had broken out of heaven to save him. He had saved him over and over and over again, in so many ways. He had saved him from things far worse than death. 

Leaning slightly forwards, Crowley muttered his friend’s name, not sure what to say. He had no confidence that he could put what was inside him into words. But Aziraphale was looking at him, desperate to hear something, so he gave it a try. 

“Angel…” Taking a breath, he scooted forwards on his chain until their knees were only an inch apart and he was talking into the gap between them. Somehow it was easier when they were closer together. “You are the best thing that’s ever happened to this world.” The angel started to look away, but Crowley raised a hand and touched the outside of his cheek, turning his face back forwards. “I know it sounds stupid, but I mean it. Look at humanity. Look at all the ridiculous, wonderful things they’ve done - that’s all down to you. You were the one holding their hand the whole time. You were the one who taught them how to count, and write, and build. And you didn’t take one iota of credit - which was so stupid, because they would have worshiped you like a heathen god.” The angel’s eyes softened slightly. Feeling emboldened, the demon pushed on, starting to build a bit of momentum. “Instead, you kept your mouth shut, and you inspired them to hope and beauty, which I thought was a damnable waste of time, considering their natural talents were plunder and destruction, but I was wrong.” He rapped a nearby pile of books with his knuckles. “They took everything you gave them and grew civilisations and made art, and wrote songs, and stories - so many stories!” A grin peeled across his face, because the hope filling Aziraphale’s eyes, at his praise, was so beautiful. It hurt to see it, but not in any of the ways Crowley had been hurt before. “Your love made them what they are, angel,” he told his friend. “You never forced them. You let them grow. You built this world every bit as much as I did, more so, in some ways. And if you think about it,” he added, feeling suddenly, potently vulnerable, “me making the Earth, and you making them, and them being meant to love the world… I’d say we’re pretty fucking poetic.” The last bit was too much. The demon felt heat rush across his face and he looked down at his hands. “I’d follow you anywhere, you beautiful idiot,” he muttered, in a hoarse voice that barely made it past his lips. “You will always be enough.” 

The future hung in the balance for a moment or two. Outside, London continued, a slow grind of traffic and pedestrians, the distant wail of a siren. Everything was very still. Aziraphale was frozen, watching him. Then, the angel moved forwards. 

Relief flooded Crowley from end to end. His head fell forwards onto his friend’s shoulder as the angel wrapped him in a tight embrace, chests pressing against chests, eyes clenched shut. The angel’s fingers were gripping him at the nape of the neck. The demon’s own hand was closed around the fabric of his friend’s shirt, right over his heart. He could feel the muscle beating beneath ribs and skin. Aziraphale’s heart, beating because the angel chose for it to beat - chose life, chose him. The barriers made of all the things Crowley didn’t know or understand were gone. There was only the mingled feel of them both in the air, and the soft sound fo their breaths. 

Time passed, in some fashion. Noise happened, beyond the grubby panes of the window, but the two paid it no notice. It felt like forever, encased in their little bubble. They were warm, and safe, and wanted, and neither of them had any desire to move. Eventually, however, they did. Giving a little sniff, the angel pulled back and the demon loosened his grip on him. They hovered there for a second, just an inch or so away, then the angel - always the bolder of the two - tilted his head back a bit and pressed the softest of kisses against the demon’s forehead. 

“Thank you,” he whispered, pulling back to watch Crowley with eyes that were still damp but no longer sad or fearful. Instead, they blazed with light.

The demon made some noise, finding himself incapable of words. As the angel drew back again, sitting up properly on his chair, the demon reached out and took the hand that had dropped from his neck, winding his finger’s between Aziraphale’s, prolonging the contact. 

They sat for another few seconds, gathering themselves.

“I’m sorry for shouting,” the angel said, eventually. “I was just…”

“Afraid?”

“Yes.”

Crowley eyed him. “Yeah, me too.”

“I just want you to be safe.”

“I know.”

“I’m terrified that things will change, and I won’t be able to protect you.”

“You don’t need to protect me-,” the demon started to protest, but the angel interrupted him. 

“I do!” He grimaced, slightly. “I know it’s foolish. I know that you can take care of yourself, but that’s just how it is. I do need to protect you.” He met the demon’s gaze a little bashfully. “I need you.”

The demon felt a rush of feeling that was not entirely unlike being submerged underwater. He gave a little cough, the intensity of it all becoming slightly too much. 

“Yeah, well,” he looked away out the window, at the fogged shapes of the morning commuters, winding their dreary way to work. “I need you too. Heaven knows why - irritates the Hell out of me - but there we go.” 

A squeeze on his fingers forced him to look back around, to where Aziraphale was smiling at him. The sight of him, shoulders relaxed now, and still gripping onto his hand, caused a strange calm to wash over Crowley. It was done, he thought, dimly. It was all on the table. They had said everything they needed to say. All he had to do now was hold on to the angel’s hand and wait. And holding on he could do. He was very good at it. 

“I think,” the angel said, after a long period of silence, “if everything she did was to give us a choice, then we must have been the two she meant to be there, at the beginning. I can’t just have been chance.” He had the same quiet euphoria that Crowley felt, burning in his eyes. Hesitant and eager, a little afraid but full of anticipation. “I can’t help but feel we’re meant to be there at the end, too. Together,” he added, shyly. 

“Then you’ll stay?” The demon asked, hardly daring. 

“_We’ll_ stay.”

The words were said with gentle finality and, somewhere distant, a gate closed for both of them. Neither noticed. There was not a shred less love in the world now that the gate was closed. They could still feel the distant connection to Her and all that She had made. They always would.

In the present moment, the angel’s thumb was tracing slow circles against the inside of the demon’s wrist and gentle need was building inside of Crowley, heat pooling in his belly. He wanted to close the distance between them again, differently this time, but that meant more questions. 

“Listen,” he began, awkwardly. “I know we’ve not talked about what we want from this, uh, physically - because we mean a lot more to one another than humans have words for, but I don’t want to assume anything. You’ll have me whatever, I just-,” 

“I’d like to kiss you,” the angel cut him off, voice gentle. He had always been gentle with him, thought Crowley, feeling the red flush which had only just receded from his cheeks spreading out over them again. “If that’s where you are, too, then we can talk about the rest later.” Aziraphale tilted his head slightly. “If that’s okay?” 

The demon gave an affirmative noise, more of a strangled whimper than a word, then grimaced at himself. His body felt tight with anticipation. Need was building, compounding on itself. 

“Are you sure?” The angel was watching him with an expression that made Crowley feel as if he were being x-rayed. The colour of his eyes stood out so vividly in the sunshine, all soft flecks of hazel and endless blue. He was made for sunshine, the demon thought, vaguely; or perhaps sunshine was made for Aziraphale. Aziraphale, his friend, now his partner, who was going to stay with him in their world, together, until the end. Aziraphale, who he could kiss, if he wanted to. “We can wait,” the angel reminded him, gently. “We can leave it, for now.” 

“No…” the demon forced words out, past the heady anticipation, and was surprised to find them quite calm, with only the faintest trace of a hiss. “I want this.”

“Okay.”

Aziraphale reached out with the hand that was not entwined in Crowley’s and lay his thumb gently against his cheekbone. He traced it all the way down to his jaw, then lifted it and traced down the length of his nose, brushing over lips which parted expectantly, and coming to rest against his chin. It was like being mapped, thought the demon, feeling a little dizzy with want. 

“Is this okay?” 

Crowley nodded. 

Leaning over a little, his friend took his hand away, and used it to pull the chair the demon was sitting on a little closer. He was strong enough that the move didn't appear to strain him - and that caused a little shiver down the back of Crowley's spine. Then he shivered again as Aziraphale leant back and their knees bumped together gently. 

"Still okay?" the angel asked.

He nodded. Words failed. 

"Good." Reaching up again, the angel repeated the move with his thumb. "That's good," he murmured, a tentative smile pulling at his lips. "Because I've wanted to do this for so long."

Then, carefully, he leant in and pressed their lips together. 

The first time was barely more than a brushing glance, all soft skin and the gentle nudge of his nose against Crowley’s cheek. The second was full of promise - a bit deeper and more fumbling - their lips parting slightly to feel the wetness inside. The third was when the demon finally managed to get his head around the fact that this was actually happening, and give a halfway decent response. It was abandon. Their hands, which had been previously entwined together, were suddenly wrapped around one another’s faces and necks instead. They were pressing closer, barely pausing to breathe, just drinking one another in until they were nearly drowning. It was beautiful, beautiful abandon. 

The physical sensation was like nothing the demon had experienced before. They were not just surface, not just skin on skin. Or, rather, they were, but they were also more. Wrapped up in the power of one another, bathing in the glow of two immortal souls - all barriers laid low and infinitesimally close to being one thing spread across two bodies - there was all the beauty of the world running through them. There was all the burning heat of the stars, the turning of the earth, and the beating thrum of life. Want rolled over them, filling them up. The wanted it all; every silly bit of their silly human world, every possibility of life that they could possibly have. They were going to stay, Crowley thought. They were going to protect their world forever. And in the end, thought the demon, when the sun boiled the oceans and the skies burned away - when earth was no more and they had protected every last soul they could protect, and humanity was spread out among the galaxies - he would take Aziraphale to where he first created. He would show the angel his stars and they could explore the rest of the universe together, until the end of time. 

They remained wrapped around one another for a long time, in the little corner of the bookshop. Their mouths met urgently at first, then tenderly, then lazily, just drinking in the feel of one another. Even when they eventually did break apart, they stayed close. The demon’s hand rested on the back of the angel’s chair, blocking out the rest of the world, creating a little safe space where it was only the two of them and nothing else mattered. The angel’s right hand rested on the top of his thigh, his thumb stroking a circle against Crowley's knee. Bowing his head, the demon let himself watch its progress for a while, smiling to himself when Aziraphale took the opportunity to kiss his ruffled hair. 

“What now?” The angel asked, after enough time had passed that one of them had to say something. 

The demon let out a soft groan.

“Anything…” he felt drunk and pliant. He could have razed a city with the love running through his veins. He could have built a galaxy. He tilted his head back and focussed all of it on his partner, instead. “Anything you want, angel.”

Aziraphale beamed at him, then looked quickly away, cheeks pink. When he looked back, Crowley was still watching him, so he repeated the movement, giving his head a little shake - at himself, the demon was sure. He knew him so well. He had known him for six thousand years. He was going to know him forever. 

Lowering the hand from the back of the chair, he reached out and turned the angel’s pocket watch over, marvelling at the fact that he still used the stupid thing.

“Breakfast?” He asked, then frowned at the time. “Or… lunch?” 

The angel looked back at him, shy and eager. 

“Stay here a while?” He suggested. “You can reheat the coffee and I can tell you about the new books I got in, this morning?” 

Stay here, just them, away from the world. They deserved time, thought Crowley, watching his old friend, his new partner, watch him back expectantly. They deserved to spend the next thousand years wrapped up in one another. They had given so much. They deserved to take for a while. And there was literally nothing he would rather do, in the whole universe, than sit and listen to the angel talk about his new shipment of books, and maybe, at some point, try kissing him again. 

“Stay here a while,” he confirmed, leaning back in his chair and slouching forwards a little, so his legs, now on either side of Aziraphale’s, knocked gently against the outside of the angel’s knees. “You tell me about the books.” He gave the angel a slightly playful nudge. “Mind, if you start talking philosophy, I’m off.”

“Deal.” 

The angel smiled - full angel smile, the whole thing, skin glowing from within himself - and the demon thought, inwardly, that he was so very fucked. 

He was going to spend the rest of eternity listening to Aziraphale talk, he thought, eating wherever the angel pleased and doing whatever the angel wanted, and he was probably going to enjoy every second of it. Truly disgusting amounts of love were pouring through him. He was in. He was completely and utterly in and it was the best decision he had ever made. As Aziraphale pulled the first of an enormous pile of books towards them and began to enthuse about the binding, the demon felt himself smiling stupidly and didn’t bother to hide it. He was absolutely fucked and completely happy about it. 

They stayed in the little room all afternoon before heading out for dinner together. It was wonderful and new, and safe and familiar, all at the same time. From outward appearances, nothing much had changed between the pair, apart from the fact that sometimes - when it all became too much, or when they were waiting to order at the restaurant, or simply just because he wanted to - Crowley reached out and took Aziraphale’s hand. 

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, if you've got this far, I commend you. This fic was a bit of a beast to write and I'm not entirely sure I did the idea justice, but hopefully at least some of you had a good time.
> 
> If you have a moment, I'd really appreciate any feedback. It's always interesting to hear what people have taken from a story - as so often its different to my own interpretation. Reviews make better writers, so please click on the link below and leave a few words. And if you enjoyed this, check out some of the oneshots I have kicking about. They're all far shorter and have much less plot! 
> 
> So long until next time,  
C.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me lurking on [IG](https://www.instagram.com/heycaricari/), [Twitter](https://twitter.com/heycaricari), and [Tumblr](https://heycaricari.tumblr.com/) @heycaricari


End file.
